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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPIIsrCOTT & CO. 
1871. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The importance of ascertaining the his- 
torical TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS . . 5 

II. The historical idea of jesus . . .19 
III. The records . . -. . . . . 26 

TV. Self-consecration 43 

Y. Seclusion 57 

YI. First public appearance as a teacher . 62 

YII. Nazareth 86 

YIII. The leper 91 

IX. The paralytic at capernaum . . . 101 

X. Storm on the lake 108 

XI. The maniac of gadara , . . . .116 

XII. Charges against jesus . . . . ' . 130 

XIII. The woman cured by touching his clothes. 140 

XIY. The little daughter of jairus . . . 147 

XY. The mother and brothers of jesus . .153 

XYI. False wonders 164 

XYII. Purpose and method 170 

XYIII. The relation of jesus to mankind . .177 

XIX. Closing scenes 187 

(iii) 



THE IMPORTANCE OF ASCERTAINING THlI HISTORICAL 
TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS 

There can be but little hope that an end will ever 
come to the existing confusion of thought respecting 
the position and authority of Jesus, until the positive 
historical truth concerning him is fully and distinctly 
settled. So long as this continues undetermined, so 
long a*s his name stands, as it does now with most, for 
a formless mist, there will be no limit to the diverse 
representations of him that Fancy, having ample room 
and verge enough, will create, or to the Theological 
speculations which these representations will be con- 
ceived to authorize. 

Although it is generally held that Jesus stands to 
the world in a peculiar relation, such in kind as is 
borne by no other man that has ever lived, a relation 
other than that of a purely historical person, yet what 
grounds there are for this idea of him can be decided 
only by inquiring what are the historical facts con- 
cerning him. 

2 (5) 



6 . JESUS 

■ There is, however, no possibility of ascertaining 
what of historical truth there is in the literary notices 
of him, that have come down to us, except by a method 
which, at the very outset, precludes the supposition 
of anything out of the course of Nature in his case, 
which may be without precedent, but must still be con- 
formable to natural laws. No inquiry into the truth 
of history can proceed a single step save upon the pre- 
sumption that all true events are, actually or probably, 
within the sphere of the laws and order of Nature and 
in unison with them. The prevailing idea of miracles, 
as departures from the natural course of things, can 
have here no place. Reported facts, that are profess- 
edly outside the laws of Nature, cannot be matters of 
historical investigation, for the plain reason that, such 
being their character, the inquirer has no means of 
testing their truth, no means of distinguishing them 
from fictions. They are not capable of proof.* 

■5^ The reluctance to admit the inviolability of the laws of 
Nature arises from its seeming to imprison man in a huge, 
unalterable mechanism, forbidding him to regard himself per- 
sonally as an object of the Infinite Care, rendering Prayer, 
and direct access, and a sense of intimate relationship, to the 
Highest, impossible. But all such inferences are obviated by 
the fact that such is the nature of man as a moral and spiritual 
creature, — so does his immaterial being stand related to alf that 
is, that nothing can befall him which he may not so use, if he 
will, that it shall serve him as effectually as if it were directly 
ordered for the purpose. All things, notwithstanding and 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS ^ 

Whatever, therefore, is thought of the relation of 
Jesus to the world, in order to find out what is his- 
torically true in regard to him, we must deal with the 
accounts of him that we have in the Four Gospels as 
we deal with all other historical writings, as accounts of 
a man, of a man in his origin and condition like other 
men, and as accounts, moreover, which, composed in a, 
comparatively speaking, rude age, require, for a right 
understanding of them, that careful allowance shall be 
made for the peculiar forms of thought and language 
belonging to the time when they were written. Deal- 
ing with them thus, we are to discover how much can 
be gathered from them that, by being consistent with 
itself, with all the circumstances of the case, and with 
truth, nature and probability, will be shown to be 
true beyond all question. 



even because, they are inviolably obedient to law, are tributary 
to the soul, awakening and feeding the inborn thirst for the 
True and the Good, which is both the spirit and the answer of 
Prayer. There is no room for the idea of an interposing 
Providence, for there is no need of it. To the soul every 
event is a special Providence. Nothing but man's own per- 
verted will ever stands in the way of his drawing near to the 
Highest and of the Highest drawing near to him. All things 
are so constituted that there is no possible position which they 
may take in conformity to the order of Nature, that will not 
open the ^ay for the least to the greatest. Of the countless 
myriads of spiritual existences, every individual is central to 
the Universe. 



8 JESUS 

This method is necessary for two reasons. First, 
for the reason just stated, because the only way of 
satisfactorily establishing the truth of any alleged fact 
is by showing it to be in harmony with all admitted 
facts. Everything true is in unison with the true. 

And secondly, because it is beginning to be de- 
manded that all truths shall be established in this 
way. It is a want of the time. Formerly it was, and 
with many it still is, otherwise. So long as the pres- 
ence and agency of the Unknown were perceived only 
in the strange and extraordinary, it was required that 
any one, claiming to come direct from the Supreme, 
should be shown to be in his being or working, or in 
both, above the order of things as they are, which is 
equivalent to his being out of that order. So only, it 
has long been thought, could Jesus be shown to have 
any authority. But now, and it is a noteworthy revo- 
lution in the history of human thought, directly the 
reverse is becoming the demand. Since, at every 
step,— and during the present century what numerous 
and great steps have been taken ! — Science discovers, 
as an all-pervading characteristic of this Universje of 
things, an order exact, invariable (which is, in fact, 
the special witness of an omnipresent Intelligence), 
w^hatever now claims to be true, — of God, can make 
good the claim only by showing itself to be in con- 
formity with the universal order. And accordingly 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS 9 

there is a decided tendency, in the advocacy of Chris- 
tianity, to rest its claims upon its consentaneousness 
with human nature and of course with all nature. 
Thus also, it is beginning to be felt, must the historical 
truth concerning Jesus be established, if it is to be 
established at all. Only so far as the notices that we 
have of him are consistent with the truth and nature 
of things can they now be received as true. 

But by very many the attempt to discover what is 
historically true respecting him is given up as hope- 
less. Not a few, among the thoughtful and learned, 
perceiving that the origin of other religions is hidden 
in the mists of fable, have long since come to the con- 
clusion, that Christianity is no exception to this fact, 
and that scarcely anything can now be satisfactorily 
settled about Jesus beyond the actual existence of 
the person so named, and hardly even that. And 
this conclusion is confirmed by the imperfect character, 
and certain obviously fabulous features, of the ancient 
writings that profess to tell us about him. Despair 
of obtaining any certain truth, together with the fact, 
as the case stands, that such ideas prevail in regard 
to the authority of Jesus as tend to fetter the minds of 
men rather than set them free, appears to be leading 
some to regard Jesus as no longer a help but an ob- 
stacle, and to think that it would be better if the world 
were well rid of the whole subject, and to endeavor, 

2* 



10 JESUS 

for their own part, to take ar position outside the 
sphere of Christian thought. 

The strong presumption that there is against every 
religion which dates its origin far back, resulting from 
the fact that the primitive histories of religions always 
partake largely of the fabulous, must be admitted. 

But, in the present case, this presumption is not so 
strong as to overcome the obligation to examine the 
accounts of Jesus, and see whether the origin of 
Christianity, like that of other religions, be indeed 
hopelessly lost in fable. Imperfect as the Four Gos- 
pels are, they certainly present some features that 
look like history. They are eminently circumstantial. 
They abound in references to persons, and places, and 
thus virtually challenge the application of historical 
tests to their statements. And unless we have lost 
faith in man's native sense of truth, in his ability to 
distinguish truth, which is of God, from fiction, which 
is of man. Nature from Art, we cannot despair of being 
able, sooner or later, if we look with a single eye and 
an unconquerable faith in the ultimate success of the 
inquiry, to discriminate between the fables and the 
facts in the accounts of Jesus, and determine the 
proportion of each. 

The arduousness of this inquiry lies mainly in the 
difficulty of neutralizing the influence of inherited modes 
of thought that cleave to us like our flesh and qualify 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS [{ 

the trustworthiness of our conclusions, and of reach- 
ing that high point of view, whither no interest shall 
pursue us to div^ert us from seeing the case exactly 
as it is. That stand-point has never yet heen occupied. 
The history of Jesus has been studied with great in- 
dustry, but always either for dogmatic purposes, or 
under the bias of a scepticism equally fatal to a 
perception of the truth. But wq must not despair. 
We can approximate the right position. As that is 
approached, the pure historical facts concerning Jesus, 
be they many or few, that can be gleaned from the 
Gospels, will begin to stand out as distinguishable 
from whatever is fabulous or mythical in them, as 
mountains are from the clouds by which they are 
surrounded. 

Having been long interested in this very inquiry, in 
the endeavor to ascertain what, and how much, can 
be certainly known respecting Jesus, while I do not 
presume to think that preconceived notions have not 
unconsciously affected the singleness of my aim, I am 
emboldened to say that the result of my studies, such 
as they hav^e been, is a steadily growing conviction that 
this is by no means a hopeless inquiry. It promises 
rich fruits, worth all the time and labor. I believe 
that it is entirely possible to arrive at a perfectly 
satisfactory conclusion, not only that there was such 



12 JESUS 

a person as Jesus, who led a thoroughly human life, 
but that, from an historical point of view, he is dis- 
tinctly seen to be a person of such original and ex- 
traordinary greatness as renders him of necessity a 
cardinal fact, an enduring power in the religious 
education of the human race; and, moreover, brief as 
the accounts that we have of him are, colored, moulded, 
as they are, by the ignorance, the love of the marvel- 
lous, the prejudices and superstitions of the period 
when they were written, that still facts can be ob- 
tained from them, numerous and significant enough to 
illustrate him as a man of unrivalled force and eleva- 
tion of character. 

Holding this result of an historical inquiry into the 
Life of Jesus to be possible, believing that we have, 
in the Four Gospels, accounts of such a person, and 
that it can plainly be made to appear that they war- 
rant the representation which I give of him, I repeat 
what I began with saying. When the historical truth 
in regard to Jesus shall be made clear, an end will 
come to the theological speculations and to the theories 
of Supernaturalism, which so confuse the thoughts of 
men, and are so fruitful of doubt and denial. In the 
Person of Jesus will be found qualities at once thor- 
oughly human and truly divine, if there is aught divine 
in this Universe of things, qualities, that render the 
speculations and theories, just referred to, superfluous 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS 13 

and nugatory. In him we shall have an object, which, 
by the constitution of human nature, awakens and 
exercises the sense of truth, inspiring confidence and 
veneration, and creating new ideas of the True and 
Good, and of a Life imperishable. The sentiment which 
Jesus, when rightly apprehended, inspires is, to all the 
purposes of duty and consolation, identical with faith 
in God and in the immortal nature of man. And what, 
in the way of religious faith, can we need more? We 
may not be able otherwise to define our faith than as 
faith in Jesus personally.^ To the speculative intellect, 
God and Man and Immortality may still be incompre- 
hensible and continue so forever. But in the trust in 
Truth and Goodness, in the insight which we have 
into the true life, in the revelation that is made to us 
of the transcendent possibilities of our nature, when 
once there dawns upon us the inspiring Idea of Jesus, 
we shall possess in ourselves an all-sufficing conscious- 
ness of the Greatest and Best, of the sacredness of our 
being, and of a Life that the changes of mortality may 
nourish, but cannot destroy ; although, as I say, we 
can find no words, no forms of thought, to express 
this consciousness, and it can be represented only in 
the life. 

And we shall then know, too, what is meant by the 
Authority of Jesus. We shall see that it is an author- 
ity naturally and necessarily inhering in such a man 



14 JESUS 

as he was : the authority of Character, of personal 
truth and virtue. 

Here, I apprehend, is where a great mistake is made, 
namely, in resting the claims of Jesus chiefly upon 
his office as a Teacher rather than his character as a 
Man. It is not by teaching by word of mouth that an 
individual acts with the greatest power upon others. 
As the highest cannot be put into words, it cannot be 
communicated by words. Whatever can be thus com- 
municated is limited, definite, and, as no limit can be 
assigned to human progress, it must sooner or later 
be outgrown. The best, therefore, that the wisest of 
teachers can do for us is so to help us as to render 
himself obsolete. There is a greater than the power 
of speech, the power of Being — of Life. Speech is of 
man, Life is of God. Herein is the power, the author- 
ity of Jesus, and it is in truth divine. He is a forever 
Living, God-given Fact. With the boundaries of 
knowledge always widening and always demanding 
new modes of speech, Jesus does not so much instruct 
as inspire us, educating the sense of truth, so that, as 
our views are enlarged, our ability to distinguish the 
True and the Good will ever keep abreast with them, 
and we shall be able ever more adequately to formu- 
late our knowledge and advance to ever worthier phi- 
losophies of Being and to a purer Religion. This in- 
fluence of Jesus is indestructible. It is active at this 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS 15 

hour, and in none oftentimes more vitally than in those 
who would fain account him unnecessary. 

The relation that Jesus thus sustains to his race, 
not primarily as a teacher, but far more intimately as 
an inspirer, as a perpetual giver of faith and love and 
immortal hope, is not altogether peculiar to him. 
Every great and good man, every good deed, every 
friend whom we revere, every holy memory that we 
cherish, is a spring of moral inspiration. But the 
better the life of Jesus is understood, the more plainly 
does it appear that, in the greatness of his being, he 
stands so high above all born of woman, that we are 
instinctively prompted to place ourselves reverentially 
at his feet. I do not presume to limit the resources of 
the Infinite, and say that it can go no farther, that a 
greater than Jesus cannot be. But to me, he is be- 
yond comparison with any who have ever lived. In 
the personal power which he manifested and in the 
entireness and native grace of his self-abnegation he 
stands by himself among men. 

That this high position is not universally accorded 
him is not surprising. Hardly had he disappeared 
from the world, before thick clouds of mysticism and 
superstition, generated by the Imagination which the 
vision of him had raised, began to envelop his person 
and history ; and that figure, strange only in its con- 
summate naturalness, became so distorted as to render 



16 JESUS 

any distinct and credible idea of it impossible. Not 
yet are those clouds dispelled. They cluster heavily 
about him still. Or they have been scattered only to 
be succeeded by the mists of a scepticism which allows 
hardly the faintest outline of him to be visible. What 
wonder is it then that even thoughtful men are not 
only insensible to the peculiar power of his character, 
but have long ceased to have any interest in him ? He 
is unknown. He has been studied, it is true, through 
all these centuries, and whole libraries have been 
written about him. But it has all been done, as I 
have said, in the interest of this or that system of 
theology, and not for the sole object of discovering 
the pure historical facts respecting him. Or, where 
there have been no dogmas sought to be substantiated, 
the study of the Life of Jesus has been pursued under 
the bias of a scepticism equally fatal to the attainment 
of the simple facts of the case. 

But it will not always be so. Against the strongest 
sceptical tendencies, against the authority of all our 
theologies, the Spirit of Truth is bound to win its way 
and become the all-commanding incentive in all inves- 
tigations, whether scientific or religious. And then it 
will be seen that no pride of opinion, no private or 
party interest, can afford any satisfaction to be com- 
pared with the delight of seeing things as they are. 
And then the great Life of Jesus will command the 



HISTORICAL TRUTH CONCERNING JESUS H 

most earnest attention, since the whole field of human 
study presents no subject more profoundly interesting. 

I find no slight hint of the greatness of Jesus in 
the very remarkable character of the Accounts of him 
that have come down to us. Fragmentary, rude as 
they are, they stand in certain striking respects by 
themselves. Where in all literature is there anything 
like them? Granted that there is an obvious admix- 
ture of fable in their contents, that they show on every 
page the impress of the ignorant and superstitious age 
in which they were written, only the more wonderful 
is it that, at the very first sight, upon the most cur- 
sory reading, there break upon us, here and there, from 
these artless stories glimpses of a person surpassingly 
great and venerable. Public as most of the events 
related are, it is found to be none the less, but most 
emphatically, a private, personal life with which we 
are brought acquainted. The particulars related show 
us the very quality and soul of a man, of a man 
thoroughly genuine, real. In the most trying circum- 
stances as upon the commonest domestic occasions 
he is as artless, as unconstrained, as natural as if he 
were alone in his closet. Crowds thronging around 
him, their eyes gleaming with wonder, do not affect 
the singleness of his aim or the simplicity of his 
manner* He is equal, and more than equal, to every 



18 JESUS 

emergency that arises. Not a loophole is afforded 
for the suspicion to lurk in, of a possible difference 
between what he appears on the spot and what he is 
in secluded moments. What but the extraordinary 
force of a great personality could have created for 
itself such a record ? The truth is that, wherever he 
was, however he was placed, even when arraigned 
and executed as a criminal, Jesus was always abso- 
lute master of the situation, and by word or deed 
made himself felt so powerfully that men could no 
more help giving report thereof than they could help 
breathing. Coherently or incoherently ihe story of the 
Life of Jesus was bound to be told. It mattered not 
at all who they were who chanced to be present as 
witnesses, wise or simple, competent or incompetent. 
Simple were they and incompetent? Only the more 
impressively does that strain of heavenly music sing 
itself through all the discords of their recitals. Otily 
the more strikingly does it appear that the Gospels are 
the necessary effects and consequences of a character 
of unparalleled power, being due, not to human art, 
but to the personal force of him of whom they tell. 



XX 
THE HISTORICAL IDEA OF JESUS 

The idea which majr be obtained of Jesus of Naza- 
reth, the sou of Joseph and Mary, from the accounts 
that we have of him in the New Testament, histori- 
cally dealt with, is briefly this: that he was a man of 
a singularly great nature, of rare religious genius, of 
a Wonderfully commanding moral sense. The inscru- 
table, immaterial Life, existing in every man, was 
manifested in him in unparalleled fulness. The dif- 
ference between him and other men was a difference 
not in kind but in quantity. 

As his being, however great, was not beyond the 
possible scope of Nature, as he was strictly human, 
neither was the order of the Eternal Providence de- 
parted from, in regard to the conditions under which 
he Was born, and grew. He came into life as all come, 
was subject to like limitations with us all, and con- 
cluded with all born of woman in the same mystery of 
Being. So obviously was this the case with him, as 
appears from the Records rightly understood, that 
these statements would be needless, were it not for the 

(19) 



20 JI"^^ US 

exaggerated representations that have been made of 
his nature. 

So clear and commanding was his native sense of 
truth, in other words, such a naturally inspired man 
was he, that, with the same intuitive faith with which 
other men assent to any self-evident truth, he saw the 
central, heart-truth of things, the true character of the 
Sovereign Power, and the relation of the human soul to 
that, and to all souls. It came to him as it ccmes, more 
or less dimly, to all: through his own being and the 
things that are. He lived to learn, and grew by the 
experience of life. The aspects of the visible world 
were full of meaning to him beyond words. The sun- 
shine and the rain told him of an Impartial Bounty 
presiding over all. Ee, lead of all men, needed spe- 
cial or miraculovs communications. The greatest 
truths lay legible to his eye in the commonest things. 
The falling sparrow made known to him the Eternal 
Providence, as the falling apple is said to have revealed 
to Newton the law of gravitation. 

The most sceptical generally acknowledge Jesus to 
have been a teacher of great wisdom and humanity. 
He was indeed that. But he was more than that, be- 
cause he was more of a man than a teacher, because 
his being was in advance of his teaching. What other 
teacher is there of whom directly the reverse is not 
true? The teaching of others is in advance of their 



HISTORICAL IDEA OF JESUS 21 

being. Jesus was a great teacher. But what was 
peculiar to him is not the superior wisdom of his utter- 
ances, remarkable as they were, considered by them- 
selves, apart from him, but the fact that there was 
more of truth in his being than his words express, or 
any words can. Moral precepts, pure and wise like 
his, may be found in the writings of other teachers and 
of other religions. Still, he takes precedence of all, in 
that the man was immeasurably greater than his word. 
What he taught was no mere conclusion at which his 
fallible understanding had arrived. It was his per- 
sonal life articulated. His wisdom was the very heart 
of him. Truth flowed, warm and living, upon every 
occasion from his lips or his act, just as the blood 
comes when the flesh is pricked ever so slightly. 

This representation of Jesus is authorized by the 
fact that his utterances were seldom or never abstract 
and general. They were not the fruit of study, but, 
suggested by circumstances, they bear every mark of 
being occasional and ejaculatory, breaking forth spon- 
taneously from an unfathomed deep of wisdom. It is 
true he often appears to be enunciating abstract prop- 
ositions, But the universal terms which he employs 
are found, in so many instances, to have been prompted 
by deep emotion, produced by some particular incident, 
that it is fair to infer that when there is nothing in the 
narrative that explains this mode of speech as the lan- 

3* 



22 JESUS 

giiage of passion, it is because the occasions, moving 
him thus to speak, are not reported.* lie was a 
teacher, as Nature is a teacher, without being didactic, 
and all the greater teacher for not being so. Many of 
his most striking truths were given in the form of 
stories drawn from life, showing that what he taught 
was so entirely his ow^n that he was able in a manner 
to play with it, and put it at once with admirable grace 
into any shape that the most sudden and unlooked-for 
emergency might require. Truths discerned by the 
rest of the world at a distance, familiar enough but 
shadowy abstractions, were throbbing in his heart and 
hand. He arrested every circumstance and made it 
the herald of his thought. So that it seems now as if, 
as he moved through life, all things around him were 
instantly organized to embody his being, such w^as the 
aflQnity between him and truth and nature. 

ITe is styled the Founder of Christianity. But 
Christianity, so called, sprang from him. He did not 
found it. He did not name his follow^ers Christians, 
nor did they adopt this name. It w^as given them 
some time after his death by others, and in derision. 

^ Thus the Sermon on the Mount, which, of all the utter- 
ances of Jesus, approaches nearest to a general discourse, is 
probably made uj), in part at least, of things said by him on 
particular occasions and called forth by circumstances. 



nrSTORICAL IDEA OF JESUS 23 

Christianity was a growth. And its character has 
been formed in p^reat part by other influences than his. 
lie told upon the world, in the first instance, not by 
his words abstracted from him, not by any system of 
theoh)gy, but by his person, by that in him, which was 
none tlie less powerful because it was indefinable, and 
which wrought through his air, his manner. And 
this influence was undesigned, involuntary, uncon- 
scious, as inseparable from him as its fragrance is from 
the flower or light from the sun. Only so far as the 
world has caught the spirit of his nature, is it really 
of his religion, directly moulded by him. Not by in- 
stitutions, catechisms, creeds, nor by formulas of any 
kind is his influence mainly propagated. It is con- 
tinually reproducing itself, and by a certain contagion 
that can no more be fenced in within any conventional 
limits than the light or the air. 

Should certain things told of him, prov^e to be, not 
legends, fables, or myths, but historical facts, such as, 
for example, the disappearance of disease at his word, 
the return of his friend Lazarus to life at his summons, 
and his own reappearance alive after his death on the 
cross, and should it be found, moreover, that these ex- 
traordinary things are susceptible of being placed in 
such a light as to be seen to accord with the laws of 
Nature as naturally as the shiuing of the sun, and, so 



24 J'ESUS 

far from impairing, to increase our sense of his great- 
ness, illustrating and rendering more complete the 
portrait of him, few are there, I apprehend, who, 
whether they assent to what I say of him or not, 
would not acknowledge that he is not to be classed 
as merely one among the famous wise and great men 
of the world. Such facts, as I have just referred to, 
once admitted, set him by himself, above the highest 
among men. Not that they iniply any mysterious 
peculiarity in his nature, but only this : an extraor- 
dinary fulness of spiritual power, a force of character, 
a wealth of life, a quantity of being, such as has ap- 
peared in no other. He was a great, eminent fact in 
the natural history of our race, opening to us a new 
and loftier idea of Man and creating faith, as nothing 
else does, in the reality and victorious energy of the 
Life hidden in us all. 

While the special greatness of Jesus consisted, not in 
what he said but in what he was, still, were it not for 
our long and blinding familiarity with his words, we 
should be impressed far more deeply than we are with 
the abundance of wisdom, with the quantity of ad- 
mirable sayings, which this wondrous Jewish youth is 
recorded to have uttered. Trite as they are now re- 
garded, they still shine in their broad, deep truth, great 
lights in the firmament of thought, especially when we 



HISTORICAL IDEA OF JESUS 25 

observe how even in this age of boasted advancement, 
fanciful speculations and sanctified phrases and childish 
artificialities have possession of the minds of men. 
What pearls were the}^ that fell from those lips, 
trampled under foot though they be by a sensual 
world given over to the worship of externalities I 
Think, for instance, of that splendid definition of great- 
ness, uttered by him too so incidentally — by the way- 
side ! '' Whosoever will he great, let him served 
What a world of wisdom is here! A lesson to be 
conned by princes and nations and by every domestic 
circle no less. 



xxz 

THE RECORDS 

When, having gathered this idea of Jesus from the 
Four Gospels, we examine them more particularly, and, 
bringing distinctly before our minds the various scenes 
and incidents therein described, perceive, for the most 
part, how consistent they are in themselves, with one 
another, and with truth and nature, how strikingly 
they are impregnated with his powerful personality, 
and how naturally withal even the fables and exagger- 
ations, which they contain, arose, the origin and char- 
acter of these Writings are laid bare to us. They are 
found to be just such compositions as were bound, under 
the circumstances, by the irresistible force of truth and 
nature to appear. They give us, not indeed the exact 
figure of Jesus, but just such an image of him as must 
needs have been reflected from ihe rude mirror of his 
time. No plant ever sprang into being and took shape 
more naturally than these Writings. Such things as 
they tell could not be let die out of the memory of 
mankind. Non norunt hsec acta mori. They had to 
live, live in the letter as well as in the spirit, as surely 
as they w^ere real. 
(26) 



THE RECORDS 2T 

But then, such was the limited culture of the time 
and place, the story of the Life of Jesus is told 
imperfectly, — in fragments. It could not then have 
been told otherwise or better. No portrait of him is 
given or even attempted. Facts only, oftentimes very 
slightly or not at all connected, are stated ; and fables 
and exaggerations are mingled with them. And of 
the facts, sketches only are given, — only prominent 
points mentioned, and much has often to be supplied 
in order to render the story in any degree more com- 
plete. Still, fragmentary, imperfect as they are, these 
Writings bear the impress, deep and sharp, of the 
very form and body of Fact and Nature. 

Jesus himself never wrote a word, nor did he so 
much as suggest that others should prepare a record 
of his sayings and doings. He made no provision, in 
the way of writing, to perpetuate the memory of his 
life. He had no need. 

And, moreover, his immediate friends were of a 
humble class, unlettered persons, w^ho cannot be sup- 
posed to have taken readily to the art of writing. 
And even if they were competent to the work of 
putting on record what they had seen and heard, the 
time never came to them, when they might have con- 
ceived the design of such a work ; or it came to them 
only very late, only when '' many^^ accounts (Luke, i. 1), 



28 JESUS 

more or less fragmentary, were found to have already- 
gotten abroad. So that when the idea did come to 
them, they did hardly anything more than put together 
the written materials already existing. We may well 
doubt whether they gave much time or any special 
care to the work. Of the Four Gospels that we now 
have, it is a significant circumstance that only two 
bear the names of personal friends of Jesus: Matthew 
and John, and of these, the first is the name of a dis- 
ciple by no means distinguished, and although the 
other is the name of the disc'ple who is recorded to 
have stood nearest to Jesus, it is a question, to say 
the least, whether John had any direct hand in the 
composition of the Gospel that bears his name. 

And further, it requires no very critical examination 
of these Writings to be satisfied that they are but 
little more than compilations of documents previously 
existing, the first three especially, the so-called Synop- 
tics. The Fourth Gospel differs in a most marked 
manner from the others. It has a peculiar, decidedly, 
dogmatic character, and was avowedly written for a 
purpose (John, xx. 31), to establish a certain official 
or theological representation of Jesus. In a word, it 
shows strong marks of having been composed after 
those opinions concerning him were beginning to take 
form, which were early imported into the Christian 
Church from the philosophy of the East, and which 



THE RECORDS 29 

afterwards assumed such extravagant shapes and rose 
to so great an authority. Still, this Gospel, as truly as 
the others, but not equally with them, manifests traces 
of being, in important parts, made up of materials 
purely historical. 

That our Gospels should have the origin which I 
have indicated, that the substance of them should 
have been written by other than the immediate friends 
of Jesus, will be seen to be very natural, when it is 
borne in mind that after his death his personal dis- 
ciples were fully possessed with the idea that the 
world was shortly to come to an end. It is true, 
Jesus had disappeared. His mortal life was termi- 
nated. And it has been taken for granted that their 
first thought must have been to record his sayings 
and doings. But he had left them, as they believed, 
only for a little while. He was to come back, cer- 
tainly in that generation, and he might reappear at 
any moment, and with circumstances of preternatural 
grandeur which would throw the Past, the events of 
his brief mortal career, utterly into the shade. In the 
attitude of absorbing expectation and in the full belief 
that the end of the world was close at hand, how 
could it ever have presented itself to their minds that 
it was necessary to make a record of the Life of Jesus 
for the information of those who should come after 
them? There were none to come after them. They 

4 



30 JBSUS 

were, so they believed, the last preneration. Jesus 
himself was coming. He would take charge of all 
things. 

While the personal disciples of Jesus were, for this 
plain reason, the last to think of writing about him, 
the incidents of his life were nevertheless of so remark- 
able a character, that nothing can be more natural than 
to suppose that, among the multitudes who witnessed 
his career or had information concerning it, there were 
persons, ranking neither with his avowed followers, 
nor with his determined enemies, uncommitted either 
way, persons, who were so struck by the extraordinary 
wisdom and greatness of his words and his bearing, 
that they were moved to make records of things so 
wonderful. It was, I conjecture, to persons of this 
description that the 'many' accounts which Luke 
alludes to as in existence when he wrote, and of which 
our present Gospels were mostly composed, owe their 
origin. 

Luke himself was not a personal disciple. He was 
a friend of Paul, and neither was Paul personally ac- 
quainted with Jesus. That Luke was moved to i>re- 
pare an account of Jesus notwiihstanding the many 
accounts which he says were already in existence, 
implies that he regarded those accounts as having 
been made l^y jXThons whose opportunities hv had no 
reason for supposing to be as good as his own, or, at 



THE RECORDS 31 

least, that those accounts had not the authority of any 
well-known names among the first disciples of Jesus. 

At all events, by whomsoever written, whether by 
uncommitted lookers-on, or by constant attendants 
upon Jesus, these ante-Gospel documents came into 
existence before his followers were formed into a 
strictly defined body, before there existed anything 
more than the rudiments of the great organized move- 
ment that grew out of that Life, before the disciples 
had any but the vaguest notions of what they were to 
do as his disciples, — before, in fine, the first, fresh, 
powerful sentiments of wonder and admiration which 
the incidents of his life inspired, were alloyed by par- 
tisan or official considerations. 

The interest, the powerful interest that Jesus awak- 
ened while he was living, was not confined to the 
humblest of the people, nor to those only who attached 
themselves, to his person. We are told of travellers 
from a far country, Greeks, who, visiting Jerusalem 
when he was there, were curious to see him (John, xii. 
30). Nor were all the teachers of the Law and Phari- 
sees alike bigoted. We have mention of more than 
one individual of these classes, who manifested an 
interest in him. 

The conclusion, therefore, is, that certain, compara- 
tively speaking, ingenuous persons, most probably 
outside the more intimate circle of the di^iciples, were 



32 JESVS 

moved by a simple and strong sense of the extraordi- 
nary character of the things said and done by Jesus 
to prepare those original accounts which afterwards 
went to make up the Gospels that we now have. 

These earliest records were probably made in the 
first instance with no distinctly conceived, ulterior pur- 
pose, for private satisfaction merely, or for the infor- 
mation of friends, as Luke prepared his Gospel, not 
with a formal view to publication, but for his friend 
Theophilus. 

As no art of Printing then existed, and none of our 
modern facilities of publication, there could have been 
(happily for the simplicity of these writings) none of 
those factitious motives so active now in the produc- 
tion of books. It may even be doubted whether it 
occurred, to the authors of these primitive records, 
when they were engaged in the work, that their 
writings would ever be copied. 

These original accounts of Jesus were in all proba- 
bility very fragmentary, — separate relations of one or 
more passages of his life. 

But when once they were composed, and especially 
when copies of them came to be taken, there would 
naturally arise a desire to render them more com- 
plete. 

Their authors then, or others, into whose hands 
these writings passed, would, in order to obtain further 



THE RECORDS 33 

information, seek acquaintance with those who were 
best informed, with the immediate friends of Jesus es- 
pecially, and learn what they could from them ; and 
the disciples were thus led to relate what they knew, 
not for the sake of making converts, but simply to 
gratify curiosity. And this, probably, was the way in 
which the original records grew and came at last to 
take the shape of our present first three Gospels. 

Thus it was that the numerous writings of which 
Luke speaks (ch. i. 1) came into existence. It was, 
as he expressly states, on account of these many 
records already in circulation that he was led to 
prepare his Gospel. His introduction creates the 
expectation of a wholly original work from him, — 
the story of the life of Jesus told over again and in 
a new form. It needs, however, but a slight examina- 
tion to satisfy us that Luke himself made use of these 
previously existing accounts, adopting such as he had 
good authority for knowing to be true, and putting 
them together, obviously, at times, with very little 
regard to the right order and connection. 

The same original writings appear to have been 
used in the composition of all the first three Gospels, 
which accounts in part for the fact that, with all their 
circumstantial variations, they often relate the same 
things in the same words. 

The characteristic of the first three Gospels, which 
44: 



34 J^^US 

indicates that such was their origin, is the appearance 
which, in the main, they present of having been 
written with a singular freedom from, even an 
allowable, partisanship. No design is discernible to 
make out a case. No anxiety is betrayed to guard 
Jesus against misconstruction. They tell what is 
apparently against him just as they tell what is for 
him. They relate things of the significance of which 
they evidently had but a very inadequate appreciation. 
It is evident that Jesus was far greater than they 
were aware of. They never stop to make explana- 
tions. Indeed, so obviously careless, so entirely off 
their guard are these writers that, if what they tell 
were not substantially true, nothing could be easier 
than to expose its fictitious character. Thus the 
Gospels have the appearance of owing their existence, 
in substance, to the pure force of the truth which they 
tell. Had their authors had a thought of anything 
else, had they had an eye to effect of any kind, it is 
not possible that these writings should have the art- 
less, unconstrained character which marks them so 
strongly. Any other purpose than to state what they 
knew, and believed to be facts, would have been sure so 
to bias their minds that its influence would be at once 
visible in the features of their work. In fact, to a 
certain extent we perceive obvious traces of influences 
which actually alloyed the pure sense of truth in their 



THE RECORDS 35 

minds. While the first three Gospels show, in sub- 
stance, that their authors thought only of telling what 
was true, yet we can see how they were biased by 
their Jewish predilections, which made them view 
things in a peculiar way. How much of the Gospel 
ascribed to Matthew is a mere compilation of pre- 
viously existing documents, and how much was com- 
posed by the Apostle himself, it is impossible now to 
say. But if the hand of Matthew is anywhere visible 
in it, it is in the color given to one and another in- 
cident by quotations from the Jewish Scriptures, evi- 
dently to accommodate the story to Jewish modes of 
thought. 

The Fourth Gospel, as I have said, has a very 
peculiar character. It stands by itself. I am inclined 
to the belief that it was written, not by John, but by 
some highly spiritually-minded friend of his, much 
younger than he, and holding the Apostle in great 
veneration. From John, the writer received directly 
most of the facts which he states. But he has told 
the story after his own fashion. And, neither willing 
nor able to separate his own highly-wrought amplifi- 
cations from what he actually received, he has given 
the whole credit of the work to his revered friend, 
not for the sake of securing for it an authority which 
it would not otherwise have, but because the writer 
honestly thought that it owed all its value to the 



36 JESUS 

Apostle. He had found all that he writes, so he be- 
lieved, in what he had received from John. 

That the three other Gospels, by the way, exhibit 
no features of a like kind with those of the Fourth 
Gospel, furnishes significant evidence that they must 
have been written very early. They show no traces 
of those peculiar modes of thought in regard to Jesus, 
which began to germinate very soon after his death. 

That Luke prepared the Gospel which bears his 
name, and that Matthew and Mark had more or less 
part in the composition of the Gospels respectively 
attributed to them, may be considered pretty certain, 
since, if these names had been given to these Gospels 
arbitrarily, it is difficult to understand why names of 
higher authority, such as Peter and James, were not 
chosen instead. 

Supposing, now, that such was the way in which the 
Gospels came into existence, there are two things that 
we must keep carefully in mind, if we would ascertain 
the precise facts which they contain. 

First The nature of the facts related. 

Second, The probable character and culture of the 
narrators. 

Upon these two points we have no knowledge but 
what is furnished by these writings themselves. 

1. As to the nature of the facts related. While they 



THE RECORDS 37 

were, for the most part, easily to be apprehended, visi- 
ble, palpable, standing out in broad sunlight, they were 
also novel, extraordinary, and consequently very excit- 
ing. They were of a ch aracter so to inflame the passion 
of wonder, that the faculty of calm and accurate observa- 
tion could not but be more or less disturbed. Care must 
be taken that due allowance is made for this disturbing 
influence, which, while it must qualify the correctness 
of these writings, is, nevertheless, so essential a con- 
sideration in any attempt to ascertain their contents, 
that no degree of accuracy in them could compensate 
for its absence. Hardly any amount of circumstantial 
discrepancies in the Gospels could prove more damag- 
ing to their credibility than the non-existence in them 
of any marks of the influence which the facts stated, 
supposing them to be true, must have had upon those 
who witnessed and recorded them, and consequently 
upon the manner in which they are recorded. It is in 
this very respect, by the way, most particularly, that 
the Gospels bear the inimitable stamp of truth. They 
give evidence throughout, altogether undesignedly, of 
the existence of precisely that state of feeling which 
the events related, supposing them actually to have 
taken place, must have produced. 

2. And then, again, we must take into account the 
probable character of these writers and what was their 
degree of culture. A cursory examination of the first 



38 JESUS 

three Gospels gives us the impression that their 
authors were men of much simplicity of mind, not 
what might be called educated men, so devoid of art is 
the structure of their compositions. More critical 
study deepens this impression, and satisfies us fully 
that the Gospels were written by persons of such sim- 
plicity of purpose that it is not for a moment to be 
suspected that they have ever deliberately stated any- 
thing that they themselves did not believe to be true. 
In a word, the story of the sayings and doings of Jesus, 
so far as it is told by them, is told pretty much as children 
would tell it, with no appearance of art or constraint. 

The manifestly unsophisticated character of the 
narrators, while it is inconsistent with fulness or 
special accuracy of detail, is a satisfactory warrant 
that they were altogether too simple-minded to have 
fabricated incidents at once so natural and so original, 
and sayings so wise, as these that are found in the 
Gospels. Where they relate what it is impossible 
should have occurred as they represent it, it is not 
because they are inventing what they tell, but because 
they saw things with eyes dilated with wonder, or 
were unconsciously prevented by some preconception 
from seeing things as they were, or, it may be, that 
they tell the story correctly enough and we fail to 
understand them from not making due allowance for 
their peculiar modes of speech. Writing, or rather, 



THE RECORDS 39 

observing under the influence of some state of mind, 
the nature of which we can easily surmise, they give 
us faithfully the impressions made upon beholders 
thus affected. They tell the story as persons thus 
influenced would naturally tell it. We can almost 
always discover the biases to which they were ex- 
posed, and measure the extent to which they depart 
from the exact truth, as the form and height of an 
object may be inferred from the shadow which it casts. 

Although what the eye sees paints itself on the 
retina with photographic precision and completeness, 
yet it is not in any man's power to transfer the picture 
in words to paper with equal exactness. Much must 
always, and of necessity, be left untold. Nothing, 
moreover, is a whole by itself To write the com- 
plete history of an atom, one must write the history 
of the Universe. AW that with reason can be ex- 
pected in regard to the knowledge of events with 
which we can become acquainted only through the 
reports of others, is that what is told of them, be it 
much or little^ shall be so told as to show the unmis- 
takable impress of truth, that is, it shall admit, without 
any forcing, of being so understood as to be seen to 
be consistent in itself, and with all else that is true and 
probable. A more satisfactory \dea may oftentimes 
be obtained of some pas event, from the very brief 



40 JESUS 

sketch of one reporter than from the more elaborate 
account of another, for the simple reason that the 
statements of the one are, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, modified by some prejudice, while the other 
has a single eye to the facts of the case. 

The more I have studied the Four Gospels, the 
more deeply have I been impressed with this charac- 
teristic of them, a characteristic which they could 
not have, were they not, substantially, written in all 
honesty, namely, this : they give us, not always the 
most important particulars of an incident, but what 
struck their authors most at the time. In other words, 
they tell and they omit just what they might be ex- 
pected to tell and to omit, supposing what is related 
to be true, and to be related by just such persons as 
these writers appear to have been. 

And, furthermore, while these narratives are very 
brief and give us but scanty direct information, so 
that many questions arise to which they furnish no 
answer, yet what is told and the way in which it 
is told are very often such as imply and involve, 
entirely unconsciously, much that is not expressly 
stated, thus enabling us to supply many details, and 
this too without any straining. Could fictitious nar- 
ratives ever be thus woven into the web of truth, 
nature, and probability, and be corroborated thereby 



THE RECORDS 41 

In fine, the story of the Life of Jesus, as we have 
it in the Four Gospels, resembles a sketch, very slight 
but true, as far as it goes, of some object in Nature or 
Art, a noble statue, for example. We have no one 
feature or limb fully drawn, only a dash or a dot 
here and there, only the fragment of a hand or a foot, 
no shading, hardly a complete outline anywhere. But 
still what is given is so truly in place, that, by care 
and patience and a due observance of the character 
and direction of such lines as appear, and of the rela- 
tive position of the several parts given, we are able to 
supply in a considerable measure what is wanting and 
to render the sketch a comparatively finished portrait, 
which, admirable as it may be felt to be, is, after all, 
not so admirable as the original sketch, which admits 
of this result, and admits of it without any violence 
done, any forcing of the original lines and points. 
That, out of bare lines and dashes made at random, a 
somewhat similar result might by great ingenuity be 
obtained, and something rudely resembling a human 
figure be made to appear, is not impossible. But, that 
out of a chance-medley, the noblest figure and the 
jnost symmetrical in all history should in this way 
be produced, — this, I conceive, is utterly incredible. 
And yet, according to the sceptical theory, the Four 
Gospels are only rude compilations of fables and 
myths. 

5 



42 JESUS 

Considering the Gospels to be such as I have 
described, we come to the question : To what extent is 
the impress of truth visible on them ? In other words, 
what are we authorized, by the marks and signs of 
truth and probability which they present, to receive as 
indubitably true concerning Jesus ? 

This question I shall attempt in the following pages 
to answer, but only in part; sufficiently, however, I 
trust, to vindicate the claims of these writings to our 
confidence as compositions of a substantially historical 
character. 

Some of the passages, which I select to illustrate 
my purpose, I have endeavored to elucidate in previous 
publications. But they are invested, to my own mind, 
with quite a new interest, and I trust they will be so 
to others, read in the light of the new view which has 
opened to me, in regard to the nature and origin of 
the extraordinary power of Jesus. 



IV 
SELF-CONSECRATION 

The Life of Jesus, according to the Gospels, may 
be divided into two periods, — a private, and a public 
period, the former extending from his birth to his 
thirtieth year or thereabouts; the latter, of uncertain 
but not very long duration, not more than a year or 
two in length.* 

Of the private period, scarcely anything is known. 
The second and fourth Gospels make no mention of 
his birth and early years. They begin with the time 
when he was about thirty years of age. The other 



•^ When we take into view the character of the ruling classes 
of that day, on the one hand, their fierce bigotry and the 
jealousy with which they guarded their power, and, on the 
other, the bold and unsparing terms in which Jesus spoke of 
them, and his growing influence with the people, we perceive 
that his public career could not have been very long. He 
could not have been long tolerated in the course which he 
pursued. That his public life lasted any leni>;th of time is 
due to the fact that it was spent in far-off Gralilee. The in- 
stant he appeared in Jerusalem, the enemies that he had made 
rose against him. They crushed him at once, — that is, so far 
as his mortal life was concerned. 



(43) 



44 JESUS 

Gospels, in one or two introductory chapters, under- 
take to give us some account of his birth and early 
childhood, but what they relate is made up of dreams, 
visions, hymns, with a mixture of Persian astrology, 
— ^just such fables as naturally appear concerning the 
origin of extraordinary men after they are dead and 
their lives have shown them to be extraordinary. 

One anecdote of his childhood is given which maybe 
true. It is related that when he was twelve years of 
age, he went with his parents to Jerusalem upon the 
occasion of one of the national festivals, and that, when 
they were about to set out on their journey home, 
the boy was missing, and found in the Temple, sur- 
rounded by a group of the teachers of the Law whose 
attention he had attracted by the reverential interest 
which he manifested in the place and by the intelli- 
gence of his questions and answers. It is further 
related that, when his mother gently reproached him 
for the anxiety he had caused her and his father, 
he expressed surprise at her not knowing that he 
could be nowhere but there, where they found him, 
in his Father's house. This incident excepted, there 
is nothing purely historical in the stories of his birth 
and early years that may not be inferred from the 
accounts of his public life. That his parents were 
named Joseph and Mary, that they dwelt in Nazareth, 
where he was probably born, and that, as he grew up, 



SEL F- CONSECRA TION. 45 

he grew in the esteem of all who knew him and in the 
graces that betokened the Divine favor, — so much as 
this we should know, even if the first and third Gos- 
pels, like the second and fourth, began with the appear- 
ance of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus ; and 
we should know it none the less satisfactorily, because 
we should learn it incidentally, by way of inference. 

The authentic history of Jesus commences, then, 
with the public period, when he was about thirty 
years of age, with his first public act, his Baptism. 
All before this is wrapped in obscurity and fable. 
Then it is that he comes distinctly into view. The 
reality of his appearance on that occasion is estab- 
lished by the most satisfactory testimony, by the 
unwritten credentials of Truth and Nature. 

While, by its perfect keeping with human nature, 
and with all that we can learn of the personal charac- 
ter of Jesus and of his relation to the time, this event, 
his Baptismal Self-consecration, is seen to be natural 
and necessary, there are certain indubitable laws of 
the mind unconsciously illustrated both by the fact 
itself and by the manner in which it is described, that 
disclose to us here a pure piece of biography. Truth 
and Nature thus testify far more convincingly to the 
reality of this event than could any number of sworn 
eye-witnesses. 

Let this passage and all that it involves be thought- 
5* 



46 JESUS 

fully and candidly considered. That Jesus was no 
ordinary person, that he was endowed by nature with 
rare moral power and insight, may safely be inferred, — 
putting these ancient writings that tell us about him 
entirely out of sight, — from the vast and enduring con- 
sequences that have resulted from his life. No com- 
mon life could have so told upon the world. 

Now is it to be conceived that such a man, or indeed, 
any man whatever, would undertake the work of teach- 
ing his fellow-men, — would quit the position and man- 
ner of life to which he had been born and accustomed 
from youth to manhood, and go forth upon a new and 
untried path, without long and careful thought about it 
beforehand? Is it to be supposed that the great pur- 
pose of Jesus was not conceived until the moment 
that he commenced to put it into execution ? Are 
we not rather required to believe, by every law of 
reason and human nature, that, years before he ap- 
peared in public, he saw with ever-growing clearness, 
and was moved more and more deeply by the sight, 
the abject moral and religious condition of the people 
around him, the fierce bigotry, the spiritual pride, the 
formalism and hypocrisy, which had usurped the au- 
thority of Justice and the Love of God, and by which 
the mass of the people were kept in the grossest igno- 
rance and wretchedness? Does not the whole tenor 
of his subsequent public utterances show how thor- 



SELF-CONSECRATION, 4'J 

oughlj he had studied the ruling classes, how familiar 
he was with their corrupt practices? Seeing what was 
around him, he early saw also with equal clearness that 
the nation was going to ruin, that its downfall was 
inevitable. He needed no special spirit of prophecy to 
discern that, no supernatural communication to assure 
him of the fact. He read it in the signs of the time. It 
was this approaching doom to which both Jesus and 
John the Baptist referred when they announceed the 
coming of the kingdom of God. A crisis (judgment) 
was approaching, so entirely had dead forms, the pay- 
ing of tithes of mint, anise and cummin, taken the place 
of those great principles of Kighteousness and Hu- 
manity which alone can save men and nations from 
destruction. John saw only the coming '' Wrath." But 
Jesus saw beyond the impending ruin. In his own 
conscious rectitude of mind and purpose he had the 
prophecy and the pledge of a better state of things to 
succeed. And this better state was comprehended in 
his idea of the coming kingdom of Heaven. 

It is interesting to observe, by the way, that in all 
that he subsequently said about the coming kingdom, it 
was the moral government of God which was to be 
established, upon which he dwelt. The imagery in 
which he clothed his thought w^as the popular lan- 
guage of the time. Some indisputable moral truth is 
always the centre and heart of all his representations 
of the heavenly kingdom. 



48 JESUS 

It is true, the sphere, in which his life was spent 
until he was about thirty years of age, was so private 
and obscure that no direct information concerning him 
during that period has come to us. But we are not 
under the necessity of supposing that he held no com- 
munication with the outer world during all that time. 
There are abundant reasons for believing that he was 
a keen-sighted observer of Nature and Life. His sub- 
sequent teachings bear impressive witness to it. And, 
on the other hand, it is impossible to doubt that such 
a character as his must have made itself felt by those 
with whom he held intercourse. That he and John 
the Baptist were more than ordinary acquaintances, 
that John had sufficient knowledge of Jesus to be pro- 
foundly impressed by his promise and greatness, may 
be fairly inferred from the manner in which John re- 
ceived Jesus, when Jesus came to him to be baptized: 
''I have need to be baptized of thee,'' exclaimed the 
Baptizer, ^' and comest thou to me P' And the allu- 
sion that John makes to ''one coming after him," ''to 
one then standing among the people, the latchets of 
whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose,'' points 
to a previous knowledge of Jesus, and breathes the 
deepest personal reverence. As Jesus was thus more 
or less known and revered before he appeared in pub- 
lic, it follows that he, on his part, could not have been 
ignorant of what was going on in the world around 



SELF- CONSECRA TION. 49 

him, or insensible to the moral and religious condition 
of his country. 

It is not otherwise to be thought, then, than that it 
was years before he became publicly known, that the 
purpose was formed within him to forsake house and 
home and go forth into the world and give utterance 
to his ever-deepening convictions, to enlighten and 
w^arn and comfort the ignorant and suffering poor, 
expose the false pretensions of the religious leaders, 
and publish the truth concerning the loving Father 
of all, and the fraternal duty of man to man. He be- 
held his countrymen lying crushed under a far heavier 
yoke than that of Rome, and he longed to go to their 
rescue. 

To suppose that a purpose of this kind was of late 
or sudden growth is in accordance neither with reason 
nor human nature. Long before he appeared teach- 
ing in the synagogues, the aims, which he subse- 
quently put into execution, were steadily becoming 
more distinct and earnest. His purpose grew and 
hardened, as all great purposes do, through doubts 
and mental conflicts, until he felt that it was his God- 
ordained work to do what that purpose commanded. 

As he saw with what ferocity the existing corrupt 
state of things was upheld, he could not be blind 
to the mortal peril of speaking boldly out against it 
and in condemnation of its supporters. If he dared 



50 JESUS 

to speak, he must dare to suffer and die. That he 
saw. His cherished aspirations therefore had to 
struggle up into shape and power against the weak- 
ness of his mortal nature, against the instinctive dread 
of the suffering he must encounter, in following out 
his secret promptings. 

The mental conflicts in which he was thus involved, 
long before he quitted the seclusion of his early life, 
were not rendered any the less severe by that tender- 
ness of nature, which the pervading spirit of his 
teachings leads us to ascribe to him. 

He might well have hesitated, — he might well have 
been dismayed at what he must encounter in surren- 
dering himself to the voice within. His meditations, 
his struggles could, however, have but one result. 
They did but strengthen him in the conviction of his 
great duty. It was God speaking, and come what 
must, he must obey. And so the hour came when he 
could no longer delay, when he must enter the path, 
which lay plainly before, though it led directly to 
certain death. 

It was not until he was about thirty years of age 
that his mind was fully made up. 

And then, so arduous did he feel the work to be, to 
which he gave himself, that, in order to commit him- 
self to it irrevocably, and that there should be no 
possibility of retreat, his first step into the new and 



SELF- CONSECRA TION, 5 1 

perilous career, to which he was summoned, was a 
public, solemn, unutterably religious act of self-purifi- 
cation and self-consecration. 

The occasion that decided him was the appearance 
of John the Baptist. That was an event that startled 
the country far and wide. Everything pertaining to 
John, his garb, his austere manner of life, his fearless- 
ness, his adoption of the sacred language of the ancient 
seers, — all united to set the Jewish imagination in a 
blaze. Crowds from all quarters flocked to the river. 
Jordan, on the banks of which was seen this wild ap- 
parition, and this voice was heard heralding the 
approach of the Lord, the coming wrath of Heaven. 
So powerful were John's appeals that great numbers, 
confessing their sins, were bathed by him in the river, 
in token of new and cleansed lives. 

To Jesus, this great popular movement must have 
been profoundly interesting. Such a universal excite- 
ment of religious feeling took with it bis earnest sym- 
pathy. The public mind, th.is powerfully turned in a 
religious direction, summoned him to cast aside all 
delay, all mortal weakness and give himself at once 
and unreservedly to his great work. 

Accordingly he went with the people to be baptized, 
to signify, by the symbol of the purifying water, his 
renunciation of whatever might allay the singleness, 
or weaken the strength, of his purpose. 



62 JESUS 

It is not for a moment to be conceived that it was 
merely in conformity to the popular feeling that he ob- 
served this religious form. In devoting himself to his 
idea of duty and a true life, he deliberately devoted him- 
self to a life of danger and^'suifering and to an early and 
certain death. It must needs have been to him, there- 
fore, an occasion of indescribable emotion. His whole 
being was stirred to the inmost as never before. In thus 
transmuting his great thought into an act, in giving 
it new life, it filled him at once with an exalting con- 
sciousness of being one with the Highest and the Best, 
of which he had never before had so intimate an ex- 
perience. It is of the very essence of a high and 
pure purpose, when thus converted into act, to pro- 
duce a satisfaction, a peace, of which, until this con- 
version takes place, it is not possible, in the nature of 
things, for the mind to be more than faintly aware of. 
As honey is sweet to the taste, so is Truth, when thus 
made living, sweet to the inner sense. When Jesus 
made this first actual movement towards realizing 
his great aim, this rich spiritual experience broke 
upon him in extraordinary fulness. Then rising to 
the loftiest self-renunciation, above all mortal weak- 
nesses and fears, he was possessed of the Highest, 
and his consciousness, at this new era of his spiritual 
life, was nothing less than ecstatic. 

And how w^as he to express the ineffable con- 



SELF-CONSECRATFON 53 

sciousness that then filled his whole being? Express 
it he must. He could not keep it to himself. He 
must speak and tell that new and transcendent experi- 
ence. But how was it to be told ? " The highest," or 
the deepest, ''cannot be expressed in words." And yet 
the stronger the feeling that moves the soul, the more 
urgent the impulse to give it verbal expression. 
What, then, is to be done ? Only one thing is possible. 
Such forms of speech must be employed as the Imagi- 
nation, kindled, inspired by the ineffable, creates. It 
is always so. For every strong feeling, there flashes 
up in the mind some vivid figure of speech. And the 
boldness of the figure measures the depth of the emo- 
tion that suggests it. 

In the exaltation of his mind at that moment, when 
he rose to such a height above Self, there opened upon 
him such a sense of light and strength and peace that 
it seemed to him as if he saw directly into heaven. 
^'The heavens were opened to him." 

And when, as he was coming up out of the baptis- 
mal water in this state of ecstasy, a dove, the recog- 
nized emblem of love and peace, chanced to come 
within the sphere of his uplifted vision, it was in- 
stantly transfigured — as almost any object, however 
familiar, would have been, that might have arrested 
his attention at that high moment — into a glorified 
omen and symbol of the present God. It seemed to 

6 



64 JESUS 

him no common dove, appearing at that instant. It 
was ^'in iodily shape" a dove, it was ''like" a dove, 
but to the raised imagination of Jesus, it was the 
spirit of the Highest, coming down to him visibly out 
of heaven. 

And then, too, how exquisitely and all unconsciously 
is it in accordance with the laws and experience of the 
mind that the words of the ancient Scripture: ''Thou 
art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," so 
expressive of the consciousness which Jesus then had 
of intimate, confiding, filial union with the Highest, 
should have suddenly come to him — as such passages 
often do, at great critical moments — without any con- 
scious act of his own will, and that so coming, they 
should appear to him and be represented as spoken by 
a voice ! 

I have repeated more than once the foregoing expo- 
sition of the Baptism of Jesus, because I am very 
greatly impressed, both in the fact itself and in the 
way in which it is related, by the wonderful illustra- 
tion, which it gives us, of the laws of the human mind 
and of the personality and position of Jesus. 

To such insight as I have obtained into this passage 
of the Life of Jesus, I have been helped by a humble 
personal experience, an experience, which, in common 



SELF- CONSECRA TION 55 

with others, I was called to pass through in the old 
Anti- Slavery times, some thirty years ago and more. 
Not a jot of credit do I deserve for the position which 
I was then driven, against my weak will, to take. I 
ought never to have delayed, but have flown to the 
help of the weak against the mighty. But I did not. 
For a long time I hid myself from the summons of 
Humanity, for I was afraid, afraid of the anger and 
alienation of friends, and perhaps the loss of bread for 
my children. But I could not hide myself forever. I 
could not be deaf to the cry of the slave, the awful 
voice of Almighty God. Yet what struggles had I 
before the truth overcame me and I had to speak or 
die! And when I resolved to speak for the Right, 
what a plunge in the dark did it seem to me, so far as 
every earthly interest was concerned! When, how- 
ever, I had committed myself to the great Cause, there 
came a new and wonderful content. It was through 
that experience that I caught a new vision of the true 
meaning of the Baptism of Jesus, and I understood, 
as never before, what was meant by the heavens 
opening, and the descending dove, and the voice speak- 
ing. 

How far off are we wont to look for the peace that 
comes from obeying the truth ! An honest conviction, 
a high purpose realized has in it the essence of all 
sweetness. All delicious tastes, scents, sounds, sights, 



56 JESUS 

only feebly symbolize the joy in the heart when it is 
one with the Right. Nay, the boldest forms of 
thought that the mind can create, opening heavens, 
descending doves, unearthly voices, are all inadequate 
to tell that supreme joy. I only touched, in great fear 
and trembling, the hem of her garment, and with what 
a peace did Truth visit me, all unworthy as 1 am 1 
How transporting, then, must have been the pure con- 
sciousness of Jesus, when in the spirit of the most 
entire Self-renunciation that the world has ever wit- 
nessed, he voluntarily surrendered himself to so black 
a fate for so generous a purpose ! 



"V 
SECLUSION 

To the season of exaltation, succeeded solitude, de- 
pression, and temptation. Nature could not long be 
sustained at so lofty a height, nor endure but for a little 
while so beatific a vision. 

Here again, in what immediately follows in the ac- 
counts of Jesus, underlying the peculiar modes of 
thought and representation belonging to the time 
when these Writings were composed, the same basis 
of fact is disclosed, the same testimony of nature and 
human experience that we have found in the story of 
the Baptism. 

Having taken the first, irrevocable, public step in 
actualizing his high ideal, committed once for all to 
the work which he had long meditated with ever- 
increasing interest, having had transporting testimony 
in his own consciousness to the perfect truth of his pur- 
pose, Jesus saw himself and all things in the light 
of this new experience. His condition had undergone 
a great change. He was born into a new life. What 
he had long revolved in the secrecy of his own being 

6* ( 57 ) 



58 JESUS 

as a thought, called up and dismissed at will, had now 
become the actuating force of his life, his inmost self. 
In the new emotions of which his heart was full, he 
could not remain in his narrow sphere and keep his old 
place there. To compose his mind, to understand and 
command himself, he fled to the solitude of the desert. 
He was '' driven of the spirit,'' that is, moved strongly 
by an impulse within. 

Many of the reveries into which he fell in his re- 
tirement were, doubtless, of aa inspiring character. 
His good thoughts refreshed and strengthened him. 
But there came hours of gloom, disturbing sugges- 
tions, especially after he had been for some time 
alone, and his physical nature was worn down by ab- 
stinence and mental excitement. Then came conflicts 
with himself, the spirit struggling with the flesh. 

It is not necessary to suppose that these dark 
seasons occurred in the precise order that the brief 
and "simple records seem to imply, or that they w^ere 
of such short duration as they appear. Only the sub- 
stance of these menial conflicts is given, the assault 
and the repulse. It is more likely that Jesus fought 
long with tempting thoughts before he succeeded in 
stripping them of their speciousness. 

It is stated that he spent forty days in the Desert. 
Bearing in mind the loose, popular character of the 
accounts, we are under no necessity of believing that 



SECLUSION 69 

his seclusion was complete during thai time, or even 
that the duration of the period spent in the Desert is 
given to a day. It might have been longer or shorter. 

His kindred and friends, we may suppose, were not 
without knowledge of his whereabouts. He was not 
a person about whom they could be indifferent. They 
probably visited him occasionally and took food to 
him. But he ate so little and so irregularly that, in 
the popular style of the Gospels (which, since such 
is their character, is never to be pressed to the letter 
against truth and probability), he is said to have 
eaten nothing. He had then as always food which 
the world knew not of. His thoughts fed him. 

It was possibly upon the occasion of these inter- 
views with one or more of his friends that he spoke of 
his experiences in the Desert. A difficulty is made of 
the fact that we have no hint of the way in which 
what passed when he was alone came to be known. 
But here is precisely one of those particulars, which, 
not being singular or noteworthy, the authors of the 
Gospel narratives, intent only upon telling what ap- 
peared extraordinary to them, never thought of men- 
tioning. In the study of these Writings, we have 
frequent occasion for this remark. 

It is interesting to observe how naturally the evil 
thoughts, with which Jesus had to contend, arose in 
his mind. As the story is told, they were presented 



60 JESUS 

to him in so many words by the Ev^il One. But since 
the world began, no child was ever tempted by the 
Devil in person. All the difficulty that is felt in ac- 
cepting this representation vanishes when it is con- 
sidered that this mode of representing the temptations 
of Jesus was peculiar to the country and the time, and 
took its shape from the popular belief of that day, 
namely, that evil thoughts are the suggestions of an 
Evil Spirit who takes delight in luring men to their 
ruin. Whence came this idea, by the way, whether 
from man's desire to have a scape-goat to bear the 
blame of his own misdoings, or from the consciousness 
of a nature, so made for good that evil seems due to an 
influence external and foreign to it, we cannot tell. But 
certain it is, that the existence of this faith created the 
mode of speech in which temptation was in those days 
described. I have no idea that Jesus, in relating his 
trials, meant to convey the impression that the Devil 
came to him in visible shape, or even that such an 
impression was received. So it was that the fact of 
temptation was conceived of and represented in that 
day. 

But, although the account of the temptations of 
Jesus comes to us in this form, it is not difficult but 
easy and interesting to see how the evil thoughts 
arose and took the shapes mentioned, — at one time, from 
the stones lying in his path as he wandered, lost in 



SECLUSION 61 

thought, in the Desert, and assuming to his imagina- 
tion, distracted by the gnawings of hunger, the form 
or color of loaves of bread, — at another, from a pas- 
sage of Scripture (Ps. xci. 11, 12), ''lie will give his 
angels charge of thee, and in their hands they will 
bear thee up lest at any time tliou dash thy foot 
against a sione,^^ a passage brought to the mind of 
Jesus, I imagine, by his stumbling as he walked in the 
rugged wilderness ; — and yet at another time, from his 
reaching some eminence whence a broad stretch of 
country opened upon his view. 

These temptations could have become known only 
by being told by Jesus himself, who shrunk not, it 
appears, from laying bare to others whatever weakness 
was involved in this exposure to temptation. 



■VI 
FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 

By meditation and prayer in the wilderness, through 
various se\^ere mental conflicts, coming to see clearly 
the falsehood of the suggestions that would divert him 
from his true aim, Jesus quitted his retirement and 
^^ returned into Galilee'in the power of the spirit," that 
is, full of moral power, strong in the conscious rectitude 
of his purpose. 

And here we come to a passage in his life, his first 
appearance in public as a teacher, the importance of 
which seems never to have been appreciated. It was 
fraught with great consequences. If I do not greatly 
err, it furnishes a clue to the right understanding of 
much that occurred afterwards, and that now causes 
embarrassment and difficulty: the so-called miraculous 
portion of the history. 

That Jesus, when he left the Desert, went first to 

Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, 

and that there his public career began, is stated in the 

second Gospel, wherein it is related also that, having 

(62) 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 63 

spoken there, he left the place the next morning, de- 
claring that he must visit other towns, which implies 
that no other place had then been visited. At first 
sight, Luke appears to say that Jesus went from 
the Desert to Nazareth, but it is evident from Luke's 
account of what Jesus said in the synagogue at 
Nazareth, that he had previously been at Capernaum, 
although what happened upon his first appearance 
there, Luke proceeds to relate as having occurred sub- 
sequently to his visit to Nazareth ; which shows, by 
the way, with what little regard to the order of events 
the materials of Luke's Gospel were put together. 
Truth only could afford to be thus careless. 

It may reasonably be supposed that Jesus was not 
altogether a stranger in Capernaum. It appears to have 
been almost a home to him. Although up to this time 
he had lived in a private station, probably, as the tra- 
dition is, working with his father who was a carpenter, 
yet, as I have already sought to show, it is not likely 
that he was wholly unknown out of the circle of his 
kindred, during those thirty years. In Luke's Gospel 
it is said that, as he grew to manhood, he grew in 
favor with man as well as God. Such a light, steadily 
increasing, could not have been hid all that time. It 
is not improbable that there was a circle in Capernaum, 
greater or less, in which the force of his rare qualities 
was felt. The friendship, which, we are told, existed 



64 JESUSi 

between him and Lazarus of Bethany and the sisters 
of Lazarus, and which appears to have been peculiarly 
of a private nature, dates, I imagine, from a time far 
antecedent to his public life, and intimates that the 
period before his public appearance was not one of 
absolute seclusion. 

When, therefore, he spoke for the first time in the 
synagogue in Capernaum, the people were curious 
and eager to hear him. Of what he said, no report 
has come to us. It is not impossible that some of the 
passages which now form a part of the Sermon on 
the Mount were uttered by him on this occasion. One 
reason possibly why what he said was not noted was 
the startling incident that occurred by which the meet- 
ing was disturbed. 

In the assembly there happened to be a man, who, 
from diseased nervous excitability, was unable always 
to control his mental operations and command himself, 
and was accordingly thought by himself and others, 
in accordance with the universal belief of the time, to 
be under the influence of an evil spirit. When not 
exposed to any exciting circumstances, he was, we 
may suppose, quiet and to all appearances entirely 
sane. In this condition was he, when he went that day 
with the people into the synagogue. Had he been 
otherwise than composed, he would hardly have been 
disposed or allowed to enter the place. But the ex- 



FIRST PUBLTC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 65 

traorclinnry power with which Jesus spoke, and his 
impressive and commanding manner so affected this 
man as to bring- on a paroxysm of his infirmity. So 
awe-struck was he by the looks, tones, whole air of 
this new teacher, that his agitation became uncontrol- 
lable. Finding himself fast losing all self-command, 
he was at once seized with the conviction that the 
foul spirit had returned and got possession of him. 
Giving way utterly to the insane delusion, no longer 
able to control his thoughts or his actions, fancying 
himself no longer himself, imagining the overpowering 
awe, with which Jesus inspired him, to be the emotion 
of the affrighted demon in the presence of so holy a per- 
son, he cried out, *' Let us alone ! Why do you trouble 
us, Jesus of Nazareth ? Have you come to destroy us ? 
I know who you are, the Holy one of God !" That the 
whole congregation, already deeply stirred by the speak- 
ing of Jesus, was startled by the strange and sudden 
outcry, cannot be doubted. The first impulse of all 
present, upon recovering from the shock, must have been 
to take the man away, such a violation was it of the 
decorum and sanctity of the place. Before anything, 
however, could be done, Jesus himself, so far from 
being disconcerted by the interruption, instantly spoke 
to the man, and, in tones to which his native conscious- 
ness of power gave a resistless authority, bade the 
foul spirit quit the man, which was precisely the same 

T 



66 JESUS 

as bidding the man hold his peace and be still. Even 
had Jesus been wanting, which we cannot suppose, 
in a just self-reliance, the deferential terms in which 
the man addressed him, must have been an assurance 
to him that the man would be submissive to his word. 
The man, hardly knowing what he had done, and 
wholly unprepared for being thus directly spoken to, 
and in such a commanding tone, by the person for 
whom he had conceived such awful reverence, over- 
come with terror, fell down with a shriek in a con- 
vulsion — ^^ And when the unclean spirit had torn 
him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out 
of him.^^ The spasm ceasing, left the man silent and 
calm. 

With the ideas which the people had of demoniacal 
agency, they could have but one view of the case, 
namely, that the evil spirit was expelled, although 
with a violent struggle, and that the man was perma- 
nently relieved; as, in all likelihood, he was, the idea 
of Jesus, the recollection of that hour, serving always 
afterwards, whenever the man was threatened with a 
return of his infirmity, to reinforce him against the 
dangerous delusion. Nothing is so effective with 
hypochondriacs as a powerful impression made upon 
the mind, and this man, in fancying himself possessed 
with a demon, was of that class. 

That this incident in the synagogue created the 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 61 

greatest sensation, and that the news of it spread at 
once through the town and in all the neighboring 
country, is evident, first, from the fact that at sun- 
down on that Sabbath day, when the Sabbath was 
at an end, a crowd of diseased persons, supposed, for 
the most part, to be the victims of demoniacal posses- 
sion, were collected around the house where Jesus 
was, — it is stated, indeed, that '' the whole city'' was 
gathered around the door (Mark, i. 33), — and from the 
further fact, that, when Jesus visited Nazareth, where 
he spoke in the synagogue the next Sabbath, the 
knowledge of what had taken place in Capernaum 
had reached Nazareth before him (Luke, iv. 25). How 
naturally and altogether without design, by the way, 
are we given to perceive that exactly that state of 
things was caused by what occurred in the synagogue 
of Capernaum, which we should justly look for, sup- 
posing that incident to have actually taken place ! 

The excitement, produced by the occurrence in the 
synagogue, we may reasonably conclude, then, was 
very great. From the synagogue, Jesus went with 
his four attending friends to the house of one of them, 
Simon. That a crowd followed him, and that others, 
known to Simon and his family, went in and filled the 
house, may also be supposed. The mother-in-law of 
Simon was lying ill of a fever. That she became 
aware of an unwonted commotion and was told in 



68 JESUS 

accents of breathless wonder of the strange thing that 
had happened in the synagogue, and that she caught 
the universal exeitenient, are also particulars that may 
be inferred. When it was mentioned to Jesus that 
she was sick, he went to see her in the chamber where 
she lay, and took her by the hand, and such, in the 
excited state of her mind, was the effect of his presence, 
of the touch of his hand and of his friendly geeeting, 
that she felt herself inspired with new strength, and 
rose from her bed, and was able to take part in the 
preparations, — prompted by the time-honored hospi- 
tality of the East, — that were made for the refresh- 
ment of the company. This was certainly very sur- 
prising, and to the people present, in the then state of 
their minds, it was all of a-piece in wonder with what 
had just taken place in the synagogue. But it is not 
difficult to see how entirely natural it was that it should 
so appear, the circumstances being duly considered, the 
intense excitement that prevailed. Wonder ruled the 
hour. The recovery of this woman added greatly to 
the popular feeling. It was new fuel to the flame. 

At sunset, when the Sabbath was over, it is related, 
as I have just mentioned, that a number of persons, be- 
lieved to be the subjects of malign spiritual influences, 
with a great crowd, were gathered around the house 
where Jesus w^as. The ' whole city^ seemed to be 
there. 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 69 

The first Gospel says that he "healed them all.^^ 
The language of the third is, '^he laid his hands on 
every one of them and healed them.^^ But, according 
to the second Gospel, only a portion of the diseased 
were healed, '' many,^^ it is said, — an indefinite expres- 
sion, — not all. And indeed, if only a few compara- 
tively, persons highly susceptible, from a peculiarly 
sensitiv^e state of their nerves, of being wrought upon 
by the bare sight of Jesus, were relieved, it would 
suffice to account for these loose, exaggerated reports, 
which are precisely of the character we should look 
for under the circumstances: faithful transcripts of the 
common belief and excitement of the hour. Where- 
ever and whenever an individual appears and works in 
some novel manner only a limited number of surprising 
cures, the talk of the time and place is just like these 
accounts in the Gospels ; it is said by one to another, 
** Have you heard of the wonderful man who has ap- 
peared, and who is curing right off all kinds of dis- 
ease ?" 

The next morning, " rising up a great while before 
day, Jesus went out and departed into a solitary place 
and there prayed. And Simon and they that were 
with him followed after him. And when they had 
found him, they said to him, All men seek thee : 
And he said to them, Let us go into the neighboring 
towns that I may preach there also ; for to this end 

7* 



to JESUS 

have I come forth. Avd he preached in their syna- 
gogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out spirits.''^ 

Thus ended the first appearance of Jesus in public 
as a teacher, which took place in the synagogue of 
Capernaum. 

Here certain very important and deeply interest- 
ing considerations present themselves. 

1. It is strikingly noteworthy that there is not a 
syllable in this portion of the history intimating any 
thought, on the part of the narrators, of ascribing 
to Jesus any peculiar or extraordinary office. Dis- 
charging our minds of our hereditary and ecclesiastical 
ideas of him, we perceive that all that is stated is, 
that he entered the synagogue in Capernaum and 
taught, and that his hearers were struck, not by what 
he said, but by the way in which he said it, by the 
air of authority with which he spoke, unlike the reg- 
ular teachers of the day (Mark, i. 22). Nor is there 
a hint that. Jesus himself laid formal claim to any 
peculiar official position. It was nothing of that sort, 
but it was that which showed itself unconsciously, 
his manner, his commanding manner, that impressed 
the people. And this is easily understood and natu- 
rally accounted for, when we take into consideration, 
what is apparent from all his utterances, that he spoke, 
not from hearsay and tradition, as did the established 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 71 

teachers, repeating what had been handed down to 
them and horror-struck at the heresy of deviating a 
single letter therefrom, but from the profoundest per- 
sonal conviction. Not by book, but from his own 
heart he spoke. This it is that gives to the oldest 
and most familiar truths the sound of immediate 
revelations, and to a man's voice the ring of a more 
than kingly authority, and robes his presence with a 
dignity far, far beyond the imperial purple. 

Such, 1 conceive, so far at least as we have now 
come in the history of Jesus, was the secret of his 
power and of the remarkable effects that attended his 
first speaking. Certainly there is nothing so far to 
tax the faith, but everything to command the assent 
of the most incredulous. Upon his first appearance as 
a teacher, Jesus spoke with the force of personal con- 
viction which, it is now natural to infer, must have 
characterized the speech of one, so many of whose 
sayings have sounded through the world ever since. 
The people were not accustomed to hear anything 
like it. They were all profoundly moved. And, 
when one of his hearers, an individual suffering from 
nervous weakness, was so powerfully affected by this 
new speaker that he could not command himself but. 
cried out and was instantly silenced by Jesus and re- 
lieved of his infirmity, caused, as it was believed, by 
an evil spirit, the people were only the more excited. 



72 JESUS 

*' What a word is this P^ is the recorded exclamation, 
what extraordinary speaking! ^' He commands the 
foul spirits, and they obey himT^ No definite opin- 
ion was expressed or formed about Jesus. He was 
simply a great wonder that had broken upon them. 
They were filled with astonishment, especially at the 
influence he exercised over the insane, or, as they 
thought, the possessed man. This was, in their eyes, 
the great miracle of the hour. And so it has been 
represented to this day. But the real miracle that 
was then and there wrought, and a perfectly natural 
miracle it was, was the effect which Jesus produced 
on the whole assembly by his manner of speaking, by 
the whole air of him. 

This, I say, was the special miracle of that occa- 
sion, the power with which he moved the people pres- 
ent, and through them and what happened there, the 
whole city, so that a crowd of persons suffering under 
the maladies then ascribed to evil spirits instantly 
rushed to him for relief. 

When once the influence of his personal presence, 
of his eye and his voice, is rightly appreciated, all 
that is here related, the effect upon the lunatic, the 
instant recovery of the woman sick with a fever, the 
gathering at sunset round the house where Jesus was, 
and, when he showed himself, the probable curative 
effect experienced, perhaps at the mere sight of him, by 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 73 

some peculiarly nervous persons in the crowd, — all 
these things are seen to have resulted as matters 
of course ; and it is seen also that the story is told, 
just as it should be told; the facts and the reporters 
being such as they were. 

2. The restoration of the insane man in the syna- 
gogue and of the mother-in-law of Simon are among 
the so-called miracles, those works, which, in our 
theologies, Jesus is represented to have done, and to 
have been preternaturally empowered to do, in order 
to attest his divine mission. But what is there thus 
far in the history to authorize this representation? 
There was nothing formal or deliberate in the produc- 
tion of these remarkable effects. They were obviously 
the merest incidents. There is no reason to believe 
that, when Jesus entered the synagogue that Sabbath 
day, he had any idea of being interrupted by a mad- 
man. And afterwards, at Simon's house, he did not 
know, until he was told, that Simon's mother-in-law 
w^as ill. These things w^ere quite incidental. And 
his action, in both cases, w^as instinctive, unpremedi- 
tated, in no respect other than a natural mode of 
proceeding. It was the inflamed imaginations of the 
by-standers that caused w^hat he did to seem so as- 
tonishing. Astonishing they were, — those sudden 
physical effects. But, the circumstances fairly con- 



t4 JFSUS 

sidered, they are plainly within the range of Nature 
and human experience. There is nothing related of 
Jesus on these occasions that suggests the idea that 
he himself was aware that he was doing anything at 
all out of the usual way. Not a syllable is there in 
the narrative inconsistent with the entire simplicity of 
his manner and his motive. 

And, moreover, it is striking to observe that the 
incidents that raised such a tumult of public feeling 
were not only unlooked for by Jesus, — they disturbed, 
and, in a manner, they distracted him. How else shall 
we account for his rising early, the next morning, long 
before day, and quitting Capernaum, and retiring to a 
solitary place, away from the people and the town, 
and there giving himself to prayer, and when Simon 
and others went after him, and, having found him, 
told him that everybody was inquiring for him, refus- 
ing to return to Capernaum, declaring that he must 
go elsewhere, to other towns, and preach, for that, he 
said, was the purpose for which he had come forth in 
public ? 

In truth, it was a purely moral work that alone 
Jesus was thinking of. He wanted to teach his poor, 
benighted countrymen, to awaken their consciences 
and stir their hearts. But the incident in the syna- 
gogue and what followed thereupon had given a ' 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER tS 

sudden and unlooked-for turn to things, a quite unex- 
pected character to the impression that he made. The 
effect had been, in a certain respect, more intense and 
exciting than he was prepared for. Circumstances 
had all at once created far and wide the strongest 
belief that he could instantaneously cure bodily dis- 
eases. The attention of all men had suddenly been 
riveted in this direction. And by no means without 
reason. Certain very surprising physical effects had 
really follovved immediately upon his word and his 
action. His mind was disturbed therefore. How 
was he to meet this new state of things that had 
unexpectedly arisen ? He could not sleep after that 
eventful Sabbath. Long before day the next morning 
he quitted his bed and the town and went away by 
himself to compose his mind by meditation and 
prayer. And the result of his retirement was, that, 
when his friends discovered his retreat and told him 
that the people were all asking for him, he refused to 
return to Capernaum, saying that he must go to the 
neighboring towns and teach there also, for that it 
was for which he had come forth, thereby implying 
that it was not to his purpose to become an exorcist 
and healer of bodily diseases. He had a far more 
radical aim. 

Is there anything, by the way, forced or far-fetched 
in this construction of the sudden withdrawal of Jesus 



*r6 JESUS 

from Capernaum ?* It is true, not a hint is found in 
the record pointing to such an explanation of his con- 
duct. The explanation is all the more interesting on 
this account, since it is so strikingly justified by the 
facts stated. The record is thus shown to contain 
more truth than it states. 

It does not appear, then, that Jesus began his pub- 
lic career with any thought of producing those re- 
markable physical effects which attended his presence 
and preaching. What his purpose was, he early de- 
clared in the synagogue at Nazareth, when he selected 
and read the passage from the prophet Isaiah : The 
spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has 
anointed me to proclaim glad tidings to the poor, to 
bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to 
the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set 
at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim a joyful 
year of the Lord. He had no idea of exerting any 
but a purely moral influence. It was not the physi- 
cally diseased, but the morally diseased that he would 
cure. The surprising physical effects, that followed 
upon his speech or his action, came at first altogether 
unexpectedly to him. He shrunk from them in the 

* First suggested by Dr. Schenkel [Das Charakterhild 
Jesu), although he does not appear to have been fully aware 
of its bearing upon the subsequent course of Jesus. 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 77 

first iustance. He would not remain in Capernaum 
where they first occurred. He was impatient of the 
popular avidity for the marvellous. '' Except you see 
signs and wonders,^^ said he upon one occasion, 
** you will not helieve.^^ It is, indeed, the one charac- 
teristic of the wonderful things attributed to him, 
distinguishing them in the most marked manner from 
all other so-called miracles, that they were done by 
him, not as wonders, not for the sake of the wonder 
that they caused, but as pure offices of humanity. 
The wonder was an incident that he would fain have 
avoided. 

His bearing in relation to these remarkable accom- 
paniments of his career is especially interesting for 
the insight which it gives us into the far more re- 
markable strength of his character and unalloyed 
purity of his purpose. I do not know that there is 
anything in all his history that creates in the mind a 
deeper sense of his moral greatness. He appears to 
have looked at these things and seen them precisely 
as they were, neither overvaluing, nor undervaluing 
them. 

1. He did not overestimate them. Dear as were the 
purposes that he had at heart, all prepared as he was 
to lay down his life for them, it never once occurred 
to him to take advantage, for the furtherance of his 
great aims, of the sudden popular enthusiasm in his 



18 JESUS 

favor which these wonders kindled, plausibly as he 
might have done so. They never tempted him to 
make pretensions to any peculiar, preternatural gift. 
He never stirred a step out of his way to produce 
them. He showed no solicitude to appropriate them 
to himself as exclusively his works. His they were 
unquestionably, in a certain plain and obvious sense. 
They never could have happened had he not been 
there. And yet many of these wonders, so far as he 
was concerned, may be said to have happened of them- 
selves, or rather, they occurred, not because he sought 
occasions for them, or planned them, or contrived in 
any way that they should take place, but because an 
extraordinary condition of mind existed all around him, 
a condition of mind, which, it is true, he had produced, 
but he produced it, not by deliberate forethought or 
design, but all unconsciously, by means which he could 
not help, namely, by simply being what he was. It 
was the natural, involuntary, undesigned consequence 
of his original and powerful personality. It was due 
to that influence w^iich is native, in every variety of 
degree, to all persons by virtue of their being per- 
sons. 

And, as unconscious of anything peculiar in his 
being as he was of any peculiarity in his breathing, he 
was not aware of any exertion of personal force in the 
production of these sudden and most remarkable phe- 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 79 

nomena. What struck him most in these cases was 
the faith of the individuals who were so surprisingly- 
affected. That it was that took his attention, and to 
which, as the active and efficient cause of the effects 
wrought, he invariably directed the attention of others, 
*' According to thy faith he it unto thee.^^ "■ Thy faith 
hath saved thee.''^ ^'Believe ye that I am able to do 
thisV '* Why ask me if I can ? Believe. All things 
are possible to him that believes.''^ Such was his lan- 
guage. 

And it may well command our most thoughtful con- 
sideration that even in the case of those wonderful 
effects that were wrought, in which we find it all but 
impossible to trace the working of his extraordinary 
personal influence, as in the restoration of Lazarus, 
for example, still it is faith to which Jesus ascribes 
the great result, and in language so impressive 
that the world can never let these wonderful words 
die: "I am the Resurrection and the Life, whoso 
believes in me, though he were deady yet will he live, 
and he, who lives and believes in me, never dies.''^ 

2. Neither did he undervalue these astonishing 
effects. While he took no exaggerated, self-magnifying 
view of them, and never sought opportunities for them, 
he accepted such occasions as came and as could not 
be disregarded without inhumanity. And, moreover, 
the faith of the persons relieved being proved by its 



80 JESUS 

effects to be no illusion but a vital fact, he recognized 
it as such. No caprice of the fancy could have been 
followed bv such consequences. The deepest and 
most vital sentiments of human nature must have 
been aroused into lively play. 

Here a question arises of deep interest: How was 
Jesus himself affected by these singular phenomena ? 
How they impressed others we know. They filled them 
with astonishment and admiration, increasing the 
faith, through which they were produced. But what 
was their effect upon Jesus ? They were not things 
to pass over such a spirit as his as lightly as a sum- 
mer cloud. Who was ever quicker than he to catch 
the significance of facts ? Truths of the grandest 
import flashed upon him from the most familiar objects. 
The birds of the air sung to him of the Infinite Provi- 
dence, and so too did the lilies of the field. The leaven 
hidden in the meal, the small grain of mustard-seed 
told him of the progress and triumph of Truth. Could 
he, then, be unmoved by those novel and wondrous ex- 
periences ? That he put upon them no self-flattering 
interpretation is evident, as I have said. It cannot be, 
how^ever, but that they must have been to him, far 
more than to others, most luminous signs that Nature 
and God were with him, that a higher ,will than his 
was working with him and through him. 

Indeed, I think it is evident, from the peculiar and 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 81 

emphatic manner in which he speaks of faith, that the 
effects of it which he witnessed impressed him very 
deeply. There is no figure of speech too bold for his 
use, when he gives expression to his sense of its power. 
Naturally strong as he was in the conscious truth of 
his aims, these extraordinary events, that came without 
design of his, gave him, I cannot doubt, new inspira- 
tion, and added greatly to his personal power. Seeing 
these things, he naturally became more and more con- 
scious of the great deep of life and power which they 
disclosed in his nature. In a word, these experiences 
were revelations to him of what was in him and in 
our universal human nature, revelations of that which 
he named Faith, and which, rightly defined, is the 
awaking in the soul of man of the highest known force. 
As his personal consciousness thus grew deeper, 
there was born, or developed in him, an intuitive and 
irresistible sense of the power by which he not only 
overawed the insane, but restored sight to the blind, 
in two or three instances awoke the very dead, and 
came himself to life again. 

Such, I conceive, was the character and genesis of 
his unparalleled personal power. It was no preter- 
natural gift. It was the necessary property of his 
great personality. It was native to the man that he 
was. 

8* 



82 JESUS 

If, as I have represented, the remarkable effects at- 
tending his presence came unexpectedly to Jesus in 
the first instance, — took him by surprise, then it could 
not be otherwise with him than as I have said. They 
must have taught him much and inspired him greatly. 
It was only natural that he should be thus affected by 
such experiences. And thus we have here a striking 
illustration of the unconscious way in which the Gos- 
pels give us to understand that the facts related had 
the influence which we justly look for, supposing them 
to be true. 

It is interesting to note, and it is in entire consist- 
ency with the account which I have given of the 
surprising effects attendant upon the appearance and 
teaching of Jesus, that they were confined at the first 
to persons afflicted with nervous disorders, the class 
of persons obviously most disposed to be affected by 
the kind of influence which he exercised, by the moral 
power of his teaching and manner. These persons 
were peculiarly susceptible of mental impressions. 
They flocked to him, because the first exciting rumor 
that went abroad concerning him was that he had cast 
out an evil spirit. He never went in search of them, 
never coveted opportunities of showing the power 
which he had over them. The universal excitement 
of faith and hope, and the imagination, caused by the 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 83 

occurrence in the synagogue in Capernaum, wrought 
greatlj to exhilarate the mentally diseased. Hardly a 
limit can be imagined to the idea which the people 
suddenly conceived of the power of Jesus, or to the 
healing influence of his simple presence, of his eye, of 
the tones of his voice, or of his bare proximity, though 
unseen, upon this class of persons, an influence, be it 
remembered, inseparable from the native and com- 
manding greatness of the man. 

Individuals, believed and believing themselves to 
be under demoniacal influence, disregarded all the 
rules of ceremonial cleanness. They were careless 
about touching dead bodies, eating the flesh of swine, 
or eating with Gentiles, or with unwashed hands. 
Hence the spirits, supposed to possess them, were 
styled unclean. They seem to have been met with 
by Jesus extraordinarily often. But it must be re- 
collected that there were no asylums then for those 
unfortunate people. They were left pretty much to 
themselves, partly, perhaps, from the superstitious 
fear of them which was probably caused by the belief 
that the spirits supposed to possess them were cunning 
and powerful to do mischief. Then, again, the belief 
in malign spiritual agencies must have wrought power- 
fully, as popular superstitions always have done, to 
produce the insanity for which it undertook to account. 
And, finally, as I have remarked, the first exciting 



84 JUSUS 

report that went abroad respecting Jesus was that 
he had cast out an evil spirit under imposing cir- 
cumstances. It is natural, therefore, that he should 
have been believed to- be a mighty exorcist. Of 
course, it was this class of diseased persons principally 
that were brought oftenest to his notice. 

[I have not forgotten that the Fourth Gospel states 
that the first miracle wrought by Jesus was the turn- 
ing of water into wine at a marriage-feast. But as 
my desire is to render visible the impress of Truth 
and Nature upon the Gospel narratives, I have 
omitted any allusion to that statement for the reason 
that, while the first three Gospels, and particularly 
the second, appear to have been in the main composed 
before there had come to be entertained any theory, 
any speculative idea, or theological representation of 
Jesus which would have inevitably biased their au- 
thors and led to the coloring, magnifying, or possibly 
even to the inventing, of facts in order to illustrate and 
confirm it, the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, is 
manifestly moulded by such a dogmatic bias, by modes 
of thought and language of a later date than the time 
of Jesus. These are visible in the Proem, and 
throughout the first chapters, according to which 
Jesus was recognized by one and another as the 
Messias and King of Israel from the very first ; 



FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AS A TEACHER 85 

whereas the other Gospels represent that as a con- 
elusion in which the disciples of Jesus were confirmed 
only gradually. As to the turning of water into wine, 
to say nothing of its comparatively trivial character, 
and the representation of Jesus as exercising preter- 
natural power over an inanimate object, the wonderful 
effect is said to have '' manifested his glory'' and led 
the disciples to believe on him. The whole style and 
air of the story in the Fourth Gospel has, compared 
with the second Gospel, an apocryphal character, and 
is glaringly inconsistent with the impression which 
that gives us, that Jesus sought to avoid the reputa- 
tion of a thaumaturgist.] 



"VIT 
NAZARETH 

The next- place that Jesus visited, when he left 
Capernaum, was Nazareth, the town in which he was 
born, or where, at all events, so great a part of his 
early life was spent, that to distinguish him from 
others of the same name, he was called Jesus of 
Nazareth. 

As he quitted Capernaum on the first day of the 
week, he probably reached Nazareth, which was not 
far from the former city, some days before he spoke in 
the synagogue there, as is related (Luke, iv.). During 
those days, so little interest comparatively, from ob- 
vious causes, was shown in him, that, after the ex- 
citing time in Capernaum, Jesus was surprised at the 
popular insensibility, on account of which, it is related — 
and it strikingly corroborates the representation, given 
in the foregoing chapter, of the power of Jesus — that 
no very wonderful effect was produced there. He 
could not — was not able (o6x rjdbvaTo) to do any mighty 
work in his native place (Mark, vi. 5, 6). 

But as the report of the wonders that had hap- 
(86) 



NAZARETH 87 

pened in Capernaum had reached Nazareth, when 
he appeared in the synagogue on the Sabbath, it was 
filled, we may suppose, with people curious to hear 
him. Although they were too familiar with his per- 
son and antecedents to expect anything very wonder- 
ful from him, yet, when he rose in the assembly, 
thereby intimating that he wished to speak, and there 
was handed him the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and 
unrolling it, he found and read the passage : '' The 
spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath 
anointed me to proclaim glad news to the poor, he 
has sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives and 
a return of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the 
oppressed, to proclaim a joyful year of the Lord," — as 
he read these words ' the eyes of all present were fast- 
ened on him,' and all confessed the grace with Avhich 
he spoke. Having read the passage from the prophet, 
he sate down, as, according to the custom among 
the Jews, the teachers taught, seated. 

He evidently selected these words of Isaiah, as 
descriptive of his own purpose, and thus virtually he 
assumed no position different from that which the 
prophet took when he made this declaration. He 
had, as the prophet had before him, in his own sacred 
convictions, the testimony of the spirit of the Lord, 
his Anointing. So solemnly bound did he feel himself 
to be to proclaim the truth which was to comfort the 



88 JESUS 

people and give them sight and liberty and bring in a 
joyfal era, that he held himself appointed for the pur- 
pose. His language does not require us to understand 
him as pretending to any preternatural commission. 
Whenever a man becomes so interested in any object 
that he is impelled to sacrifice everything for it, he 
naturally feels himself born, consecrated, anointed, to 
do that one thing. 

It is not to be supposed that Luke (ch. iv.) gives 
us a full report of what Jesus said on this occasion. 
Only one or two of the most striking things that he 
uttered are recorded. He said the people of his own 
town would be sure to put to him the incredulous 
proverb, ^'Physician, heal thyself: Do here at home 
what you have done where you are not so well known. ^V 
But a prophet, he reminded them, had but little recog- 
nition among his own people. His townsmen fancied 
that they had a special claim upon him. He quoted 
the Scriptures, however, to show that more than once 
the descendants of Abraham, the peculiar favorites 
of Heaven as they held themselves to be, had been 
passed by, and Gentiles, despised Gentiles, had been 
made the objects of extraordinary favor. 

How large his thought ! Far in advance of his 
countrymen. But what a bold and offensive thing to 
say in a Jewish synagogue ! What a profanation of 
the sacred Scriptures, every letter of which taught 



NAZARETH 89 

that Israel was the chosen of the Lord, to attempt 
to prove from them that God could neglect his own 
people and bestow his favor upon vile Gentile 
dogs! 

When it is recollected what a desecration it has 
been considered, even in this our late day, of the 
Bible and the Church and the Sabbath, to quote the 
Bible in the pulpit in order to show that the African 
slave is entitled to the rights of humanity, we find no 
difficulty in perceiving why it was that the whole 
synagogue in Nazareth was kindled into a flame of 
wrath at these citations from the Holy Scriptures. 
The people were for laying violent hands upon the 
bold speaker, who had the effrontery thus to outrage 
their most sacred faith. It was even proposed to hurl 
him headlong from the brow of the hill, on which the 
town stood. But before, in the confusion, there could 
be any concerted action, Jesus passed through the 
crowd and slipped away. He left the town. 

Whither he turned his steps, when thus forced to 
leave Nazareth so suddenly, we are not informed. It 
is only stated generally that he visited different places 
in Galilee, speaking always in the synagogues, those 
Jewish churches, and everywhere causing a great sen- 
sation by the unwonted air of authority with which he 
bore himself, and which struck those who heard him, 
as distinguishing him from their established teachers. 



90 JESUS 

This impressive manner of his was due, as I have 
said, to the fact that his speech was inspired, as his 
whole being was, from within. He spoke, not pro- 
fessionally, not what he had been told by those who 
had gone before him, but what he himself knew, — 
from deep personal conviction. And that the people 
were greatly moved, was but the natural consequence. 
Such a kindling and flatning forth was there of 
wonder, admiration, faith, that the reins were flung to 
the imagination, and no limit was pat, in the popular 
estimation, to the power of Jesus, preceded, as doubt- 
less he everywhere was, by startling and exaggerated 
reports of the wonders attendant upon his presence 
and teaching:. 



•vizx 

THE LEPER 

So far as the story of the life of Jesus has been told 
in the foregoing pages, it is so obviously in accord- 
ance with all that is natural and probable, the very 
signature of truth is so distinctly visible upon it, that 
now, when we come to an incident unlike anything 
that precedes it, the candid inquirer, however scepti- 
cally inclined, will carefully consider the case, and not 
dismiss it at once as a fable, strong as the presump- 
tion may be felt to be that exaggerations and fables 
are to be looked for in such a history as this. 

Hitherto the instantaneous physical effects, conse- 
quent upon the career of Jesus, have been confined to 
individuals suffering from diseases of the nerves, dis- 
eases highly sensitive to a personal influence such as 
he, for the most part involuntarily, exercised. It is 
now related that a cutaneous disease, of a most loath- 
some character, instantly disappeared at the word and 
touch of Jesus. 

As he was going from place to place, he chanced to 
fall in with a leper, who flung himself at his feet 

f 91) 



92 JESUS 

{'^ worshijjped Mm''''), and in accents of beseeching 
earnestness declared that, if Jesus would will it, he 
should be well. Jesus, it is stated, laid his hand upon 
the man, saying ''I will. Be clean," and the disease 
vanished. Jesus charged the man to tell no one how 
he had been cured, but to go and obtain from the 
priest, as the Law required, a certificate that he was 
free from leprosy, — in a word, a clean bill of health. 

Here the clue to an explanation of the manner in 
which the curative effect was produced, supposing it 
to have been real, appears to be lost. It is difficult 
to conceive how a mental or moral influence could 
have wrought to overcome a disease which was of 
the l3ody only. But it ought not to be hard thus to 
account for the cure of the leper, if we hold to the phi- 
losophy of many of the wisest men, which teaches that 
the mind, instead of being the accident of the body, 
is its creative, organizing life. And, moreover, cuta- 
neous disorders are intimately connected — are they 
not ? — with the condition of the blood ; and that the 
action of the blood is powerfully affected by the emo- 
tions of the mind can be questioned only by those 
who do not know what it is to blush. 

The unfortunate persons upon whom fell the terri- 
ble affliction of leprosy were, on account of its conta- 
gious character, not perniitted to remain in the towns. 
They were excluded almost entirely from human 



THE LEPER 93 

intercourse. People shrunk from them with loathing 
and dread. How greatly their sufferings were aggra- 
vated by these circumstances may be readily con- 
ceived. 

Secluded as the leper, mentioned in the Gospels, was, 
still one or more of his kindred, we may suppose, com- 
miserated his unhappy condition, and provided for his 
necessities. Through them, or from chance persons 
whom he met, and who, in stopping to speak with him, 
took care to avoid all contact with him, he had heard 
the wonderful reports, with which the country was 
ringing far and wide, of the extraordinary man from. 
Nazareth, at whose presence and word foul spirits 
shrieked and fled. We can only faintly picture to our- 
selves the intense earnestness with which the poor 
leper listened to these stories. Told in the impressive 
accents of perfect faith, they were received by him with 
a faith equally implicit, sharpened as his sense was 
by the severity of his affliction. It took no effort on 
his part to render it the profound conviction, the fixed 
idea, of his mind, that, could he only see Jesus, and 
if Jesus would will it, he would be relieved of the 
leprosy. 

It is not said how he happened to meet Jesus or 
how he came to know him. Here again we must 
bring to mind what we often have occasion to remark. 
The particulars just referred to, in all probability, not 

9* 



94 JUSUS 

being at all extraordinary, or unusual, are just the 
things which the authors of the narrative, thinking 
only of relating what appeared wonderful to them, 
never dreamed of mentioning. 

It was probably in the open country that Jesus, ac- 
companied by only a few friends, or he may have been 
alone, came across the leper, who, when he saw Jesus, 
and knew that it was he, fell down at his feet, and 
with his voice and whole frame trembling with emo- 
tion, in imploring accents exclaimed, ^^ Sir ! if you 
will it, I shall be well!'' The appeal, made with 
overpowering feeling and under so piteous circum- 
stances, went straight to the heart of Jesus. He was 
^' moved with compassion.^^ He had no thought of 
practising thaumaturgy. One only impulse prompted 
him, pity. '' From the high ground of his low 
estate," that wretched creature pleaded with a resist- 
less authority. Jesus saw and reverenced the pro- 
found faith of the man, — saw that it was no delusion 
but a faith working mightily in him, convulsing his 
whole being. Jesus did the man's bidding, obeyed the 
sacred impulse of nature, and, with a faith one with 
the leper's, exclaimed in reply, and with equal earnest- 
ness, ''I will! Be clean r^ 

With the insight that Jesus had into the extraordi- 
nary state of the man's mind, seeing how he was 
moved to the very centre of him, Jesus had an intui- 



THE LEPER 95 

tive conviction that it needed but a word of his lips, 
but a touch of his hand, to render the faith of the leper 
decisive. The action of Jesus in the case was not the 
result of any reasoning. It was divinely instinctive. 
^A reason above reason' moved him. The bare pres- 
ence of Jesus, his eye suffused with sympathy, his 
accents thrilling the soul of the hearer with the sub- 
duing authority of perfect sincerity, searched the inmost 
being of the leper. And when Jesus stretched out his 
hand and boldly laid it upon that diseased flesh, fear- 
less of the dreaded contagion, the effect was nothing 
less than electric I Veneration and Faith, — faith in 
the True and the Good, — the central forces in human 
nature, the hidden springs of our vitality, were so 
powerfully stimulated that a new and healing energy 
darted through the blood, purifying the vital current 
and sweeping away the disease. The joy of the man 
— could it have been less than ecstatic ? Jesus bade 
him go and show himself to the priest and do what 
the law prescribed, in order that the reality of his cure 
might be certified, charging him, moreover, — but it 
was more than the man could do, — to tell no one how 
he had been cured. 

The injunction of silence imposed upon the leper, — 
is it not in striking consistency with the representation 
which I have given of Jesus in relation to these 
sudden and astonishing effects following upon his 



96 JESUS 

presence and action? Does it not confirm that rep- 
resentation? Evidently he did not desire, — he took 
marked pains to avoid, — the reputation of a worker 
of wonders and healer of bodily maladies. Is it not a 
fact to be noted that these singular ^cases were never 
of his seeking? In the instance of the leper, it was 
the suffering condition and earnest appeal of the man 
and a pure impulse of compassion that moved him. 
And after the effect was realized, he would fain have 
nothing said or known about it. And it was always 
so ; until towards the last, when it became in a manner 
understood that he was not a mere healer of bodily 
diseases. When he could not disregard these applica- 
tions without being insensible to the impulses of 
humanity, he made so little account of these won- 
derful things, he so studiously avoided magnifying 
them, that he not only kept his own high moral aim 
from any admixture of lower motives, he saved him- 
self from being regarded by the people at large as a 
mere thaumaturgist. The astonishing effects that 
broke forth so abundantly at the beginning of his 
career, as he took no pains to multiply them, appear, 
certainly not to have increased, if they did not actually 
decrease, as time went on. At all events, his charac- 
ter as a teacher and healer of the spiritually diseased 
maintained the ascendency. 

The view which I offer of the extraordinary facts in 



THE LEPER 97 

the history of Jesus is much obscured by narrow and 
dogmatic definitions of Faith, or, at least, by crude 
notions of its nature. It was no random freak of the 
imagination. It was not a state of mind that one 
could have merely by saying or fancying that he had 
it. It was not produced by any arbitrary act, or by 
any act whatever, of the will. It was simply the im- 
plicit confidence, which a person so thoroughly true, 
so pre-eminently great as Jesus, naturally commanded. 
It was faith in a great Fact, faith in that in Jesus 
and in every true man, which is not of man's creation 
or acquisition, but of God, and of which a man may 
become conscious as his most intimate self, but not as 
of a thing of his own will or making. Jesus recog- 
nized in the faith of those who sought his help a 
natural, God-inspired force. It was demonstrated right 
before his eyes over and over again that the mental or 
spiritual state of these sufferers was perfectly compe- 
tent to work the desired physical change, that it 
required but the touch of his hand or a word from his 
lips, to render its influence decisive; and sometimes 
not even these were necessary, as, in some instances, 
individuals were powerfully affected by him, who were 
at a distance from him, and with whom he had only 
indirect communication. 

Two cases, at least, of this description, both chil- 
dren, the Centurion's boy and the Syro-Phoenician 



98 JESUS 

woman's daughter, are mentioned, both of whom were 
relieved through sympathy with their parents, who, it 
is noteworthy, were both foreigners, and the faith 
which they had in Jesus was shown to be in each 
case, in a peculiar way, singularly strong. 

So great was the reverence which the Centurion 
had conceived for Jesus, that, having sent some of his 
Jewish friends to solicit the aid of Jesus in behalf of 
his child who lay *'sick of the palsy" greatly suffering, 
upon hearing that Jesus was coming to him, went to 
meet him and to assure him that it was needless that 
he should take so much trouble, he needed only to say 
the word, and the boy would be well. A confidence 
like this, astonishing Jesus himself, I find it easy to 
conceive, could not have failed to have the greatest 
effect upon the suffering boy, when expressed by the 
Centurion directly to the child or in the child's pres- 
ence. 

The story of the Centurion and his boy is particu- 
larly interesting for the instance it affords us of the 
instinctive quickness with which Jesus caught the 
significance of events. The faith of this foreigner, 
superior to any that he had met with among his own 
countrymen, was to Jesus a window suddenly flung 
open, from which he looked forth into the Future 
and saw multitudes coming from the remotest quar- 
ters, far beyond the boundaries of Judea, to the 



THE LEPER 09 

communion of the true and the good, to the kingdom of 
God. 

The story of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matth. 
XV. Mark, vii.) is that she followed Jesus, importuning 
him to have pity upon her daughter, lying sick at 
home under the influence of an unclean spirit, and 
that he paid no attention to her, saying to his disciples, 
who were with him, and who begged him to grant her 
request and bid her go away, that he was sent only to 
the house of Israel, to his own countrymen. The 
woman would not despair, but fell down at his feet, 
exclaiming, '^Sir, help me!" But he told her that it 
was not right to take the children's bread and throw 
it to the dogs. Humbly admitting what he said, she 
suggested that dogs eat the crumbs that fall from 
their master's table. Struck with the faith that the 
woman thus touchingly manifested, Jesus bade her 
depart, assuring her it should be to her as she de- 
sired. He saw, I conceive, that such faith as hers 
must have the wished for consequence. 

The harshness and Jewish exclusiveness with which 
Jesus appears to have treated this Greek woman are 
somewhat extenuated by the result. Although he 
virtually classed her with dogs, he treated her, in the 
end, with his characteristic humanity. 

But some li^ht is thrown upon his conduct on this 
occasion by the representation which has been given, 



100 JESUS 

ill the foregoing pages, of his position in regard to 
these sadden physical effects that attended him. If, 
as I think we have reason to believe, they took 
him by surprise in the first instance, and disturbed 
him, if he shrunk from them, or, at least, never 
sought occasions for them, if he was desirous of 
avoiding the reputation of a mere exorcist and won- 
der-worker, and if, moreover, the immediate object 
that he had at heart was the helping of his own 
countrymen, he must have been particularly anxious 
that such a mistaken idea of him should not go abroad 
into the neighboring regions. He had much to do to 
keep down the excitement among his own people. It 
appears that at the time the Syro-Phoenician woman 
came to him he was particularly anxious to avoid 
public notice (Mark, vii. 24). It would never have 
done to have had crowds of foreigners flocking to 
him merely for the sake of physical relief. It would 
have impeded his work very seriously. And there- 
fore it was necessary that he should discourage any 
such movement, even at the cost of a' harsh word or 
two. 



Z2C 

THE PARALYTIC AT CAPERNAUM 

After visiting different towns, speaking in the syn- 
agogues, drawing together great crow'ds wherever he 
appeared, awakening everywhere the greatest won- 
der and enthusiasm, and acting with extraordinary 
power especially upon diseased minds, Jesus returned 
to Capernaum. The popular feeling there, it appears, 
w^as by no means diminished. It had been kept up 
and increased by the reports that came of his sayings 
and doings in other places. As soon as it was known 
that he had arrived, the house in Which he was was 
filled, and a great crowd was collected at the door. 

As he sate within, talking with the people around 
him, suddenly a litter, upon which lay a poor, trem- 
bling paralytic, was lowered into the room where he 
was. 

We are not sufficiently acquainted with the con- 
struction of the house to be able fully to understand 
how this was done. We only know that, like all the 
houses of the East now, and then, the roof was flat, 
and easily accessible from the roofs of the adjoining 

10 (101) 



102 JESUS 

dwellings ; or there may have been an ascent to the 
roof outside the house. However this was, the crowd 
around the street door was so great that it was found 
impossible to take the man into the house that way. 
And so he was carried through one of the neighboring 
houses to the roof; whence he was lowered into the 
presence of Jesus. 

How naturally did this mode of proceeding evince 
the strong and simple faith of the people, and of 
this suffering man and his friends especially ! They 
had no misgiving, not the shadow of a doubt, could 
they only get the paralytic into his presence, that 
Jesus would show himself both willing and able to 
restore him. 

Jesus himself was evidently touched by this mani- 
festation of confidence in him. He addressed the 
man by the affectionate appellation of ^' Son," and 
instantly assured him that his sins were forgiven. 

In the mingled emotions of fear, hope, veneration, 
and self-abasement, with which that wasted frame 
was trembling, Jesus read the heart of the paralytic, 
— saw his humility and penitence. And, in the eye 
of Jesus, such a state of mind and Forgiveness were 
one. Possibly the infirmity under which the man 
was suffering was the consequence of sinful excesses. 
Whether it were or not, he doubtless felt that it was, 
as it was a common belief among the Jews that bodily 



THE PARALYTIC AT CAPERNAUM 103 

diseases were punishments of some sin committed. 
So we learn from the Fourth Gospel (ix. 2), where the 
disciples of Jesus are said to have asked him concern- 
ing the man born blind, which had sinned, the man or 
his parents, that he was born blind. 

The extraordinary rumors about Jesus, and the 
popular excitement he was producing, having spread 
far and wide, drew into Galilee from distant places, 
and even from Jerusalem, certain persons, teachers of 
the Law and members of the sect of the Pharisees, 
who came down into the country to see the strange 
man from Nazareth and to learn what he was doing. 
His great and increasing popularity had awakened 
their jealousy. They suspected him to be, if the 
truth were known, a demagogue, having heretical and 
seditious designs, and misleading the people. The 
suspicion was quite natural on their part. He had 
made no acknowledgment of their authority, nor 
sought their countenance. He had not been bred in 
their schools. If report spoke truly, he was saying 
some very severe things about them. They regarded 
him, therefore, with great distrust, and were in a 
frame of mind to put the worst construction upon his 
proceedings. 

Some of these orthodox persons from the capital 
and elsewhere were present on this occasion. And 
when Jesus told the paralytic that his sins were for- 



104 JESUS 

given, they were, or they affected to be, horror-struck 
at his blasphemous arrogance. Who but God had 
authority to pronounce sin forgiven ? 

Jesus read their thoughts in the looks which they 
east upon him and exchanged among themselves. He 
turned to them and asked why they had such thoughts, 
and which they considered the easier, to pronounce 
the man's sins forgiven, or to bid him rise up and 
walk. That they might know, however, that he had 
said nothing that he was not authorized to say, he 
turned to the paralytic and bade him rise up and take 
his bed and walk home. 

Whereupon the man instantly rose to his feet, 
seized his bed and went ! Thus the punishment, as it 
was held to be, ceasing, proved his sins to be forgiven. 

The crowd around the house, already wound up to 
the highest pitch of curiosity and wonder, were 
amazed beyond measure when they saw the man, who 
a little while before had been borne on a litter by four 
men into the adjoining house, now issuing forth, press- 
ing through the throng, carrying his bed. *^ They 
were all amazed and glorified God^ saying, We never 
saw it in this fashion^^^ says one account. '^ When 
the multitude saw it, they marvelled and glorified 
God, who had given such power to men,^^ is the state- 
ment of the first Gospel. '' And they were all amazed 
and they glorified God and were filled with fear, say- 



THE PARALYTIC AT CAPERNAUM 105 

ing, We have seen strange things to-day,^'' says Luke's 
Gospel. 

Taking these things to be told in all honesty, where 
can we find room for the slightest suspicion of delu- 
sion ? Bear in mind the commanding air which in- 
vested the person of Jesus, the authority of his voice 
and his eye, keep in view the profound emotion of the 
paralytic, upon whom such powerful influences were 
concentrated, his suffering condition, his self-humilia- 
tion suddenly relieved by the kindness, the reassuring 
tone of Jesus, his hope, his veneration, — think too how 
all these emotions must have been intensified in him 
by the sympathy throbbing all around him, and you 
will find little to task your faith in the sudden, renova- 
ting effect wrought on him. Instantly, like a flash of 
lightning, the conviction was born in him, that what 
Jesus commanded could be done and must, and he .did 
it. He could not help doing it. He leaped from his 
prostrate positit)n, seized his bed with convulsive 
energy and went, the crowd giving way before him. 
Have not similar sudden developments of vital energy 
been witnessed again and again in persons enfeebled 
by what were regarded as incurable maladies, when 
instincts, far less powerful than those which were 
quickened into activity in this man, were suddenly 
and mightily appealed to, — the love of life, for example, 
the instinct of self-preservation ? 

10* 



106 JESUS 

The popular feeling, consequent upon this incident 
and upon all that preceded it, became so strong, such 
crowds were drawn around Jesus, that, at times, he 
and his immediate attendants could hardly find 
a moment for their necessary meals (Mark, iii. 20). 
When he appeared in public, the people rushed to see 
him, ^^ pressing upon him to touch him^ as many as 
had plagues. '^^ 

On account of the great numbers coming from all 
quarters, he kept for the most part on the borders of 
the Sea of Galilee; and he directed his disciples to 
have a small vessel kept constantly in waiting (Mark, 
iii. 9), ^' because of the multitude lest they should 
throng him.^^ He could thus pass from one part of 
the shore to another and so escape the crowds. 

But he was not always successful in thus freeing 
himself from them. Wherever he landed, it instantly 
became known who he was, and the people came 
hurrying to him from the surrounding.country, *' bring- 
ing their sick in beds, wherever they heard he was. 
And whithersoever he entered into villages or cities or 
country^ they laid the sick in the streets, and besought 
him that they might touch, if it were but the borders 
of his garment, and as many as touched him were 
made whole^^ (Mark, vi. 55, 56). 

Here again tlie popular character of the Records 
must be borne in mind. They are, by no means, to be 



THE PARALYTIC AT CAPERNAUM 107 

taken to the letter. Allowance must be made for the 
exaggerating effect of the wonder which filled every 
mind. If there actually occurred only a few instances 
of the sick brought and laid by the wayside where 
Jesus was to pass, in order to be cured by him, and of 
individuals healed by touching his clothes, they would 
amply suffice to give rise to such loose, general reports 
as these. 



STORM ON THE LAKE 

Once, when Jesus was crossing the water, there 
suddenly broke upon the Lake one of those violent 
gusts, to which the Lake is said to be peculiarly ex- 
posed, and which very soon expend their violence and 
subside as suddenly as they rise. 

A large number of boats were out on the Lake at 
the same time. No explanation of the fact is given 
or hinted at in the Records. It is only briefly so 
stated. But the probability is, that the boats were 
full of people, following Jesus, bent upon not losing 
sight of him. 

The wind, suddenly rushing down upon the Lake 
with great fury, threatened to swamp the vessel in 
which Jesus was. The people who were with him 
were seized with a panic at the suddenness and vio- 
lence of the blast. Losing all presence of mind, they 
turned to Jesus in the greatest fright, imploring him 
to save them from the impending death. But he was 
asleep. 

The crowd had been too much for him. It was, in 
(108) 



STORM ON THE LAKfJ 109 

all probability, because he was worn out by the fatigue 
of having had to do with a multitude of people, ''com- 
ing and going,'^ crowding around him day after day, 
at all hours, allowing him not a moment's rest, that 
he had come off upon the Lake to escape from so 
much excitement. 

At the cry of those around him, he awoke. And, 
as no danger, however sudden and imminent, could 
for an instant shake his implicit trust in the good God, 
or so much as disturb his equanimity, he awoke calm 
and self-possessed. Under the Providence, without 
which, as he once said, not even a sparrow falls to 
the ground, he knew no fear. 

His companions in the vessel could not divine the 
secret of his perfect composure. They could not 
enter into the elevated state of a mind like his. Im- 
pressive as his calm bearing, when we picture it to 
ourselves, is to us now, it must have been immeasura- 
bly so to those men, looking up to him from the 
great depth of terror into which they were suddenly 
plunged. 

To account, therefore, for the mysterious absence of 
all apprehension in his manner, terrified as they were, 
they rushed, in their simplicity, to the conclusion that 
there must be an understanding between him and the 
wild elements, especially as, in a few moments, the 
wind suddenly went down and a perfect calm sue- 



110 JESUS 

ceeded, and he, having shown no sense of danger, of 
course showed no sense of reh'ef at the change. 

They were in no condition to think justly. What 
with the magnifying influence of the passion of fear 
by which they were carried away, and the vague and 
awful sense which they had of the power of Jesus, 
and which so many recent events had created in their 
minds, they were disposed to see everything in a won- 
derful light. The storm upon the water, sudden and 
violent as it was, was but a faint picture of the pow- 
erful and quick-succeeding emotions upon which their 
minds were tossed. Lifted all at once by the sudden 
subsidence of the gust from the depths of mortal 
terror to a rapturous sense of deliverance and security, 
— how natural was it that they should instantly con- 
ceive the thought that he, who was so perfectly com- 
posed through it all, no more relieved by the calm 
than disturbed by the storm, and of whose extraordi- 
nary power they had had so many proofs, must have 
quelled the raging winds and waves! Such was the 
obvious, instantaneous, and most confident inference 
of those simple-minded men in the wild excitement of 
that hour. So only could they explain the composure 
of Jesus. What they thus confidently believed, they 
had no hesitation in stating as a fact. 

Only one of the three narratives of this incident 
reports Jesus as having said, '' Peace ! be still !" 



STORM ON THE LAKE HI 

The others say only that he rebuked the storm, just 
as two of the Gospels say, in the case of Peter \s 
mother-in-law, that Jesus rebuked the fever, while the 
Gospel of Mark states simply that he took her by the 
hand. As she immediately left her bed, the inference 
was that her sickness had departed at his rebuke. If 
he actually uttered the words, ' Peace ! be still !' it is 
much more likely that they were addressed to the 
shrieking and distracted ship's company than to the 
senseless winds and waves. The fearless and com- 
manding behavior of Jesus, in strong contrast with 
the uproar of the storm and their own fright, seemed 
to these men as significant a rebuke to the elements 
as any words ; and it could hardly have been other- 
wise than that the calm that came over the Lake, and 
the preceding and persistent calmness of Jesus, should 
be connected in the minds of the terrified persons 
about him as eifect and cause. It must have seemed 
to them as if the winds had recognized their master 
and retreated. 

To ascribe to Jesus the power of hushing the wind 
at his will by a brief word of command suggests the 
question how it happened that a person, possessing so 
mighty a power, should have been so exhausted by 
fatigue. Could not one who could control the winds 
have repaired his own strength ? But this is not by 
any means the only difficulty. The main objection to 



112 JESUS 

the supposition that he possessed such a power is 
that, although at first sight it appears to exalt him, it 
does in fact destroy the moral greatness of his attitude 
in those circumstances of extreme peril. If he pos- 
sessed preternatural power over the wind so that it 
instantly ceased at his bidding, what becomes of his 
fearlessness? It loses at once its lofty moral charac- 
ter. There was no extraordinary strength of mind 
manifested. For, in that case, there was no sense of 
danger to which his faith rose superior. Take a man 
out of his usual relations, it has been said, confront 
him with strange circumstances, and then what he 
shows himself to be, that is he. The men with Jesus 
on this occasion, suddenly thrown into an alarming 
and untried situation, lost — every one of them his 
head. They were what he called them, men of little 
faith, cowards. But he, although suddenly awakened 
from sound sleep to imminent danger, showed himself 
invincible in his self-possession. 

If it be asked why Jesus did not correct the erro^ 
neous idea of his credulous companions, the answer is, 
that it is not likely that he was aware of it. They 
whispered it to one another, but the awe, with which 
he inspired them, kept them silent towards him. 

This passage of the history strikingly illustrates the 
characteristic of the Gospels, which, as I have said, 



STORM ON THE LAKE 113 

could belong only to writings historically true; namely, 
that, although their narratives are very brief, yet the 
particulars which they mention are such as imply 
what is not told and what, altogether undesignedly, 
attests their naturalness and consistency. 

It is stated that Jesus had a small vessel kept in 
waiting, and the reason of this is also stated. It was 
because such crushing crowds gathered round him, as 
many as were suffering from diseases eager to get 
near him and touch him. Shortly afterwards, it is re- 
lated, but with no allusion to the reason of his so 
doing, that he entered his boat to go to another part 
of the Lake, that there were many other boats out at 
the same time, and that he fell asleep. And his sleep, 
by the way, was so deep that neither the noise of the 
gale and the waves, nor the tossing of the vessel, but 
only the shrieking appeals of his companions to be 
saved from perishing, awoke him. These facts are 
mentioned, be it observed, but not a syllable is added 
of explanation, not a hint given of any connection 
between them. Nothing is said of the reason of 
them. And yet a moment's thought suggests that he 
was compelled to go out upon the Lake to escape the 
importunity of the increasing crowd, and that as soon 
as he got into the boat, other boats, filled with people, 
determined to keep him in sight, put off at the same 
time. Furthermore, docs not his falling so heavily 

11 



114 JESUS 

asleep intiaiate how utterly he was worn out by the 
excitement of seeing and dealing with such numbers, 
all wrought up to the highest enthusiasm of wonder 
and admiration? Did ever history breathe so with 
the very life of truth? What is told implies what is 
omitted in the most natural manner possible, without 
any forced or far-fetched construction, and yet without 
a hint from the narrators to help us to our inferences. 
This is not a solitary passage in which these re- 
porters thus show themselves to be telling what is 
true. It is their pervading mode of narration, and in 
no respect is it more remarkable than in relation to 
the characters of the persons who figure in the scenes 
related. So remarkable indeed is it in this respect that, 
while there is not the slightest reason for supposing 
that the writers ever thought of telling what sort of a 
person, for instance, the early disciple of Jesus, Peter, 
was, yet everything related of him is in such perfect 
keeping with the idea of him which is unconsciously 
implied, that if the name, after being once given, had 
always afterwards been left out, and it were merely 
stated that one of the disciples said and did what is 
ascribed to Peter, we should at once recognize that 
one disciple as readily as we recognize any familiar 
acquaintance. This happens, not because it ever en- 
tered into the minds of the narrators to inform us 
what sort of a man Peter was, but because, the 



STORM ON THE LAKE 115 

incidents they relate concerning Peter being real, his 
character must necessarily be made to appear. 

For my own part, I can conceive of no proof more 
decisive of the actual occurrence of any reported inci- 
dent, like the storm upon the Lake, than that, uncon- 
sciously on the part of the reporter, it illustrates human 
nature and is in perfect accord with truth and proba- 
bility. Adopting as true, the account which I have 
given of this passage, we necessarily accept as true, 
not only that such a person as Jesus did actually 
exist, but also that he was there, in a boat, upon the 
Lake, and that the particulars of the incident are facts. 
Let those to whom I may seem to be explaining away 
the contents of the Gospels consider how necessarily 
this alleged process of explaining away implies and 
involves the recognition of the primary and essential 
facts of the history. 

Many subtle and profound correspondences with 
truth and nature are found in Shakespeare, but critics 
all recognize them as due to the intuitions of his won- 
derful genius. But who can for a moment suppose 
that the authors of the Gospels were at all aware of 
the correspondences of a like character discoverable in 
their narratives, correspondences, not only found in one 
or another Gospel, but resulting oftentimes from a 
collation of the different Gospels? 



THE MANIAC OF GADARA 

When, after the storm upon the Lake, Jesus landed 
upon another part of its shores, he was met by a 
raving maniac. 

One of the three accounts states that he was met 
by two men of this description. But this is a prob- 
able exaggeration. Had there been two men, it is 
not likely that two of the narratives would mention 
only one. 

Here again nothing is said of the way in which the 
maniac came to know Jesus. The omission is very 
natural, since, under the circumstances, there was, in 
all probability, nothing unusual in this particular^ and 
the narrators, as we have frequent occasion to remind 
the reader, relate only what was, in their eyes, extra- 
ordinary. The maniac had doubtless heard about 
JesuvS. The whole country was agitated by the stories 
told concerning him. And when he landed, and the 
men from the other boats came running towards him, 
and he was immediately the centre of a great con- 
course of people, the maniac saw that it could be no 
other than the extraordinary man from Nazareth. 
(116) 



THE MANIAC OF OADARA IH 

The madman, it is stated, was exceedingly violent. 
He had been repeatedly confined and chained, but he 
had broken away and gone raving among the tombs, 
and people were afraid to go near the places which he 
was known to frequent. 

As soon as he saw Jesus, he ran and threw himself 
down on his knees before him, and, overmastered by 
the delusion of his disordered brain that he could do 
and say only what was prompted by the foul fiends 
that possessed him as he thought, he spoke, not in 
his own character, but in the character of the evil 
spirits, who, of course, as he believed, could regard 
Jesus only as their mighty enemy and tormentor. 

The exorcising of evil spirits was, in those days, 
followed as a profession. There were those who 
made it their business. They used various arts, in- 
cantations, and magical formulas, by which they ter- 
rified and overawed those who were supposed to be 
possessed, and, thus obtaining a certain authority over 
them, inspired them with the will to resist and over- 
come their nervous weakness. Those exorcists were 
the most successful who had the advantage of a com- 
manding presence and eye, and perfect self-possession. 
In the book of Acts (ch. xix.) mention is made of 
certain exorcists, who endeavored to drive away evil 
spirits by adjuring them to depart in the name of 

11* 



118 JESUS 

Jesus, using his name as a magical power or charm. 
But the patient, upon whom the experiment was tried, 
resisted, and assaulted them with such ferocity that 
they fled the place with clothes torn, and bleeding 
with wounds. But sometimes, we may imagine, the 
exorcists inspired the possessed with fear, and were 
regarded and addressed by their patients as designing 
to torment them, or rather the spirits supposed to have 
possession of them. 

It must be kept in view that what the man said to 
Jesus was not said by evil spirits, but by the maniac 
himself uttering the wild promptings of a deranged 
mind. It was not a spirit or a legion of spirits, as 
the man insanely imagined, but it was the crazy man 
who spoke. 

Jesus asked the man (not the evil spirit) his name. 
He answered, ^^ Legion.'' This reply shows how very 
insane he was, how entirely he was impressed with 
the belief that he was the victim of malign spiritual 
influences. Not one evil spirit, nor yet seven evil 
spirits, but a whole troop of them, he wildly fancied, 
a * legion,' possessed him. 

One of the accounts states that the foul spirits 
(speaking through the man) begged that they might 
not be sent out of the country. According to another 
account they entreated Jesus not to send them into 
the abyss. 



THE MANIAC OF GADARA 119 

These were the ways, probably, in which the pro- 
fessional exorcists were wont to dispose of evil spirits, 
pretending to send them hither and thither. Some 
one or more of the regular practitioners had, in all 
likelihood, tried their power upon this man, and had 
commanded the evil spirits to quit the country, or 
return to the abyss whence they came, a command 
which had had no result. And therefore the man 
did not want any such unavailing threats and adju- 
rations to be attempted again upon him. 

All three accounts agree in stating that the evil 
spirits petitioned to be sent into a herd of swine, feed- 
ing a little way off. 

And here again, we must not lose sight of the fact, 
that this request was, like all the rest that was said 
by the maniac, the suggestion of a man stark mad, of 
a man Avhose'mind had become utterly deranged by 
the popular superstition respecting evil spirits, by the 
idea that a troop of these spirits had taken up their 
abode in him. This idea had seized upon the man 
with more than ordinary tenacity. Consequently he 
was not so immediately and powerfully impressed by 
the personal influence of Jesus as other deranged per- 
sons had been previously. The case was a very ob- 
stinate one. The extraordinary strength of this man's 
delusion is shown by his supposing that there was a 
legion of evil spirits in him, by the frenzy to which he 



120 . JESUS 

was driven, and by the mad request that the spirits 
might be permitted to go into the swine. 

This requ-est, however, insane as it was, betrays 
the characteristic cunning of insanity. In the pres- 
ence of Jesus, the maniac had become comparatively 
composed, but he was still under the delusion that 
there were evil spirits in him. He wanted to have 
ocular proof of their leaving him, visible evidence of 
their presence elsewhere. And the maniac secretly 
congratulated himself, I fancy, upon having hit upon 
a shrewd way of getting rid of the spirits, when he 
proposed that they should be permitted to enter the 
swine. The swine were unclean animals, and it was 
in character for unclean spirits to make them their 
habitation. 

It has been supposed that the insanity of the man 
was instantly transferred from the maniac, at the word 
of Jesus, to the swine, since the swine rushed into the 
Lake and perished. But again, we must not forget 
that the idea of sending the spirits into the swine was 
an absurd idea, the proposition of a madman. The 
thought of Jesus was not to send the spirits anywhere,, 
but to restore the man. It is not to be supposed that 
Jesus contemplated any effect to be produced upon the 
swine. 

And here I take occasion to say that, in regard to 
the general subject of demoniacal possession, it is not 



THE MANIAC OF GADARA 121 

necessary to suppose that Jesus was in advance of the 
common notions of the time. But I do consider it 
highly probable that he neither had any positive opin- 
ions of his own on the matter, one way or the other, 
nor were there any reasons why he should have them. 
Numbers there always are of the more intelligent, 
who, in relation to the popular superstitions of their 
time, occupy this position, namely: they do not think 
of calling them in question, and as little do they think 
of according them a deliberate assent. It never occurs 
to them to bestow any thought on them, especially if 
they are preoccupied with more important things. 
Besides, popular superstitions are not the conclusions 
of the understanding. They are, for the most part, 
the creations of the passion of Fear ; and the strength 
of this passion varies greatly in individuals, and is 
a matter of temperament. Consequently upon some 
persons superstitions, devoutly cherished by the many, 
have very little influence. They may take them for 
granted, but, constitutionally, they are incapable of 
being much affected by them. This, I apprehend, was 
the position in which Jesus stood in regard to the 
popular belief in demons and demoniacal possession. 
He recognized as simple matters of fact the phenomena 
popularly accounted for by demoniacal agency and 
represented as its effects. He took for granted the 
common understanding of them. There was no need 



122 JESUS 

or reason why he should do otherwise. Other and 
important things engrossed him. The unfortunate 
persons, who came to him, seeking relief, and sup- 
posing themselves and supposed by others to be 
under the influence of evil spirits, were suffering 
greatly, and his only object was to relieve them. The 
philosophy of their maladies was of no interest to 
him. His sole concern was to help the sufferers. 

At all events, when the imaginary spirits implored 
him not to send them out of the country, or into the 
abyss, but into the swine, it is not to be conceived 
that they were so real to him, that he had so lively a 
faith in their actual presence, there in the man, that 
Jesus was moved by their entreaties, and compas- 
sionately allowed them to go where they wanted to 
go. It was not the evil spirits, but the poor, suffer- 
ing fellow-man, right before him, whom alone he 
thought of. And when this mad request was made, 
and in reply he bade the spirits depart, his sole pur- 
pose was to deliver the man from his suffering condi- 
tion. Jesus exercised no injurious influence, no in- 
fluence whatever, upon the swine. 

What followed, the destruction of the herd, was not 
the work of Jesus, nor is he to be held responsible for 
it. It was either the work of the maniac, who, the 
instant Jesus bade the evil spirits depart, rushed 
towards the swine with loud cries and frantic gesticu- 



THE MANIAC OF GADARA 123 

lations, as the spirits were not to be supposed to give 
up their chosen human habitation without a struggle, 
or it was the unwonted crowd of people, that startled 
the herd. The affrighted animals, running Avildly 
away, leaped from the precipitous shore into the 
Lake. If we knew the exact locality, we might find, 
perhaps, that there was no apparent way of escape 
but that which they took. The abruptness of the 
bank probably hid from sight the water below, into 
which the foremost of the herd may have been forced 
by those crowding behind. Animals, like men, are 
liable to be panic-struck, and so to lose what little 
wits they have, and rush headlong into the jaws of 
death. 

It is related that the whole herd perished in this 
way. But so it might have been stated, under the 
natural and magnifying influence of the wonder that 
filled all minds, even if only a portion of the swine 
leaped into the water and were drowned. 

With the notions then universal concerning evil 
spirits, the people could have but one view of the case, 
and that was, that the swine were the victims of 
demoniacal agency, of which their destruction was so 
appalling a demonstration that the inhabitants of that 
neighborhood, and among them the owners of the 
swine, were so terrified that, as we read, they begged 
Jesus to depart out of their coasts. They were afraid 



124 JESUS 

of him, such a fearful power did he seem to possess. 
And, if they were Jews, their terror was probably 
heightened by the consciousness of transgressing the 
Levitical Law, which forbade the use of swine's flesh. 
So terror-struck were the people of the vicinity that 
Jesus re-embarked for another part of the shore. This 
he did, not chiefly, we may suppose, in compliance 
with the entreaties of the people, but because he saw 
that the effect of the cure of the maniac, attended by 
such startling circumstances, and producing so great 
a sensation, would cause a popular excitement and a 
gathering of people in no wise less than that which 
he had just crossed the Lake to avoid. 

The maniac, seeing the destruction of the herd, and 
how powerfully they were affected, was satisfied that 
the evil spirits had left him. Filled with gratitude 
for his restoration, he would fain have attached him- 
self to Jesus. Jesus, however, told him to go home, 
but he laid no injunction of secrecy upon him as to the 
manner in which he had been cured, for the obvious 
reason that that had taken place so publicly that it 
was vain to think of keeping it concealed. 

It is interesting to observe upon this occasion, as 
upon many other occasions, how indifferent, notwith- 
standing his supreme devotion. to the truth which he 
published, Jesus was to the securing of partisans. 
To the anxiety which, ever since his day, his professed 



THE MANIAC OF GADARA 125 

followers have manifested to make proselytes, he was 
a stranger. Had he been a wonder-worker, intent 
upon making people believe in his preternatural 
power, would he not have yielded to this man's solici- 
tations, and suffered him to accompany him, as a 
living evidence in his favor, to tell the story of so ex- 
traordinary a cure 't As it was, he forbade the man to 
follow him and directed him to go home. 

Indeed, vv^e have here an illustration of one of the 
most original and interesting traits of the character of 
Jesus. Dear to him as was the great purpose for 
which he had solemnly consecrated himself to live 
and die, yet so far was he from being solicitous to 
swell the number of his personal adherents that again 
and again it seems as if he sought to intimidate indi- 
viduals from joining him. Certain it is that he took 
special care that no one should unite his lot with his 
without knowing what he was about. He warned 
those who crowded around him and appeared dis- 
posed to follow him to count the cost. To follow him 
in truth, father, mother, husband, wife and children, 
and life itself must be resigned. . His true follower 
was to be as unmoved by the dearest things on earth 
as if he hated them. He must be prepared not only 
to part with life but to part with it under the most 
frightful circumstances. He was to account himself 
under sentence of crucifixion, beyond all hope of 

12 



126 JFSUS 

reprieve, and on the way to execution, carrying the 
cross on which he was to be hung. No one could be 
faithful in publishing the truth, as Jesus was publishing 
it, save at that appalling price. And Jesus suffered 
no opportunity to pass of having this understood. 
He said not a word to conciliate the strangers who 
came to him, one after another, proffering their service. 
The rich youth, whose ingenuous air touched his 
heart, he sent chagrined away. 

The narrative of the maniac of Gadara, which I 
have endeavored to elucidate, has occasioned a great 
deal of difficulty and no little ridicule. Rightly under- 
stood it gives occasion for neither. 

The one vital thing, be it remembered, in the Pour 
Gospels which I would rescue from all misunder- 
standing, and, if I may, help to place in its true light, 
is the personal character of Jesus. In this, rightly 
appreciated, and in no so-called doctrine or doctrines, 
orthodox or liberal, lies the distinguishing and essen- 
tial worth of Christianity to the world. 

It is in its bearing upon the character of Jesus that' 
the way, in which the so-called miracles told in the 
Gospels are explained in these pages, is most especi- 
ally important. It shows us plainly how entirely 
Jesus was above the weakness of seeking to startle, 



THE 31ANIAG OF GADARA 12Y 

astonish, and overawe men's minds, even when cir- 
cumstances were constantly offering him most tempt- 
ing opportunities of playing upon the wonder of the 
people. He manifested no inclination, but a strongly 
marked disinclination, to the repute of a thaumaturgist. 
Amidst immense throngs atLirst for marvels and 
ready to make miracles out of ordinary incidents, 
Jesus was wholly unmoved. Those sudden and sur- 
prising effects, which followed upon his first speaking 
in public, took him, as we have seen, by surprise. 
After that first eventful Sabbath he could not sleep. 
He fled from Capernaum, where these things occurred, 
the next morning, early, long before day. And never 
after did he seek or make occasions for like occur- 
rences. They were caused, I reiterate, not by design 
on his part, but by the indefinable power inseparable 
from so strong a nature, by the influence inherent in 
all persons in greater or less degrees, but latent in 
most, and, when active, always becoming so under 
conditions, and in the first instance, as in the case of 
Jesus, always undesignedly, and to the surprise even 
of the person in whom it is called forth. 

One of the conditions necessary to the manifesta- 
tions of this power is an aptitude to be affected by it 
in those who come within the sphere of it. In the 
time and place, in which Jesus appeared, this condi- 
tion, favorable to the effect of his extraordinary per- 



128 JESUS 

sonal power, existed in an eminent degree in the state 
of the people among whom he went teaching. They 
were a people — if we may take the immediate attend- 
ants upon Jesus as representative of the population 
at large — of a rustic simplicity of character, strongly 
disposed to be moved by wonder and veneration, and 
were thus peculiarly open to his influence. When 
we observe his great popularity in these earliest 
scenes of his public life, we are inclined to think 
that, could he have remained in Galilee without ex- 
citing the hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities, he 
might have moulded that people as he pleased. 

Furthermore, the countrymen of Jesus were looking 
with passionate expectation for an extraordinary per- 
son to appear. When Jesus, therefore, appeared, and 
instantly impressed them by the unwonted air of 
authority with which he bore himself, and when, upon 
the very first occasion of his speaking in a s\magogue, 
he was suddenly accosted in terras of reverence and 
fear by a man out of whom spake, as was believed, a 
spirit, a being belonging to the invisible world, and 
Jesus, so far from being disconcerted, instantly awed 
the spirit into silence, the flood-gates of wonder and 
faith flew wide open, and all men's minds were carried 
away by the torrent of public feeling, and all men's 
nerves were strung to a state of excitability, upon 
which, especially in the cases of the infirm and dis- 



THE 3IANIAC OF GADARA 129 

eased, the eye, the voice, the bare presence of Jesus, 
could not fail to act with power. 

Thus viewed, the remarkable facts related in his 
history are found to be instances of the action of 
natural spiritual forces. They are traceable to the 
vital elements of human nature. And should like 
circumstances again occur, should the same conditions 
coincide, given an extraordinary person like Jesus, 
and a period as susceptible as that in which he lived, 
like effects would again take place, and by a law of 
our nature as sure as that by which the grass grows. 



12* 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS 

Jesus allowed himself hardly less rest than the 
people allowed him. He went from place to place, 
not knowing in the morning where he should lay his 
head at night, publishing that kingdom of heaven, 
which is not in any outward organization but in the 
heart of man, and the great laws of that kingdom, 
which enjoin, righteousness and the love of the su- 
premely good, and condemning the false religion which 
had superseded the sacred obligations of man's natural 
duty. Everywhere large crowds gathered, so curious 
to see him and get near to him that they trampled 
upon one another in their eagerness (Luke, xii. 1). 

He appears, at first, to have confined his public 
teaching to the synagogues on the Sabbaths, talking, 
on other days, with all classes of people, as occasion 
offered, sometimes attending feasts to which he was 
invited, — these feasts being held occasionally on the 
Sabbath, — sometimes encountering teachers of the 
Law and members of the sect, reputed pre-eminently 
pious, the Pharisees. Little is told of his teaching 
(130) 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS 131 

in the synagogues. But of what he said in private 
dwellings, or by the wayside, in familiar talk with 
friends and strangers, we have interesting notices. 
What is related of him is mostly anecdotical. 

Very soon the people came together in such num- 
bers that no synagogue could hold them; and then he 
took to speaking in the open air, upon a hillside, or 
from a boat cast off a little way from the shore. 

It is interesting to note the charges that were 
brought against Jesus by the orthodox of his day, in- 
teresting, first, because we learii from them what little 
respect he paid to the social and religious convention- 
alisms of his time, and what a Radical he was, whose 
authority has since been invoked for centuries to justify 
the most dogged conservatism ; and, secondly, because, 
in a few brief words, he met these charges in so tri- 
umphant a manner, showing how fully he commanded 
the truth and was commanded by it. The obstacles 
thrust in his way he instantly turned into stepping- 
stones. Every objection made to him was an oppor- 
tunity for a new success. His opposers had better 
have held their tongues. Their rage '^ concentrated 
upon him, served only to illuminate, — it could not con- 
sume him." Nothing could disturb, everything at- 
tested, his presence of mind. He met every emergency, 
however sudden and unlooked for, as admirably as if 



132 JESUS 

he had been, all his life long before, specially preparing 
himself for it.* What has been said of another, may 
be said of him with far more significance: to object to 
him was like thinking to resist the lightning with a 
weapon of steel. It only concentrated his force and 
brought down the thunderbolt. 

The first fault found with him was that he kept bad 
company. 

Next, it was objected that he did not require of 
his disciples any special religious observances, — that 
he imposed no fasts upon them. 

Then it was charged that he countenanced them in 
positive violations of the holy Sabbath, and that he 
himself was constantly doing things on that day 
which it was not lawful to do. 

Once more, he gave offence by his disregard of the 
time-honored traditions of the fathers. 

With what crushing power did he dispose of these 
charges! To those who murmured that he sate down 
at table with people of no character, odious tax-gath- 
erers and outcasts, his vindication was that he came 
to invite not the virtuous but the vicious to repent- 
ance. And he bade his objectors go and learn the 



■^ The words of Livy which a recent writer applies to 
Shakespeare find pertinent application here — sic imriter ad 
omnia fuit^ ut natum ad id unum dicei^es^ quod cumque ageret. 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS I33 

meaning of the scripture, ^^ I will have mercy and not 
sacrifice,^^ — humanity before religious forms. It was 
to the charge made against him on account of the 
company which he kept, that we owe the immortal 
parable of the Prodigal Son, and the great declaration 
that the good Shepherd will go after every lost soul 
until he finds it, and bring it back to the fold. 

The second charge he answered in a manner equally 
striking. At the moment the question was put to him, 
why he did not require his disciples to fast, like the 
Pharisees and the disciples of John, he was sur- 
rounded by throngs in a state of the greatest excite- 
ment. His immediate attendants were beginning to 
dream that he was himself the Messiah, or, at all 
events, that the magnificent personage, whom all 
Israel was looking for, was, coming, and they were 
intoxicated with the wildest hopes. All was going 
merrily with them as a marriage-bell. They were 
momently expecting they knew not what marvellous 
things, and were as little fitted for the formal austerity 
of fasting as guests at a bridal. It was well enough 
for John and his disciples to fast, for they were thinking 
only of the coming wrath. But the disciples of Jesus 
were full of joyous hope. The reply of Jesus, there- 
fore, to his questioners was to this effect : '' You ask me 
why I do not bid my disciples fast. Can the guests 
at a wedding-feast fast in the very midst of their fes- 



134 JFSUS 

tivities and when the bridegroom has reached the 
house of the bride and is among them ? Tbere is a 
fitness of things to be observed. People cannot fast 
when they are feasting. To require them to do so 
would be as incongruous as to put new wine into old 
wineskins, or new cloth into a worn-out garment." 

This answer, by the way, is remarkable for the al- 
lusion which it contains to his own fate, of which he 
was, as I believe, fully aware from the very first, and 
of his presentiment of which this passage gives evi- 
dence all the more touching because incidental and ob- 
scure. The allusion could not have been understood 
by any one at the time. *'Can the guests at a wedding 
fast," he asks, ^^ while the bridegroom is with them? 
But," he significantly adds, ^'the time is coming ivhen 
the bridegroom will be taken away^ and then loill they 
fast,'' 

One of the first occasions upon which the third 
charge — breaking the Sabbath — was brought against 
him was when he passed through a field of grain on 
that day, and his disciples, without reproof from him, 
broke off the ears of grain and rubbing out the seeds 
with their hands, ate them, which was accounted a 
violation of the day, so punctiliously was it observed. 
Then it was that Jesus uttered the truth, which, 
simple as it is, the nineteenth century has not learned ! 
^^The Sabbath vjas made for man, and not man for 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS 135 

the Sabbath. Man is master of the Sabbath.^^ It is 
a noteworthy fact that Jesus never mentioned the 
Sabbath but to condemn that superstitious observance 
of a day which continues to this time notwithstand- 
ing men profess to bow to his authority as supreme. 
Upon another occasion, he justified his manner of 
using the Sabbath by the great saying: '^My Father 
has never ceased working, and *I work," virtually de- 
nying, by the way, the Rest of the Creator, which the 
ancient Scripture tells of, and of which the Sabbath 
was declared to be the memorial. There was, indeed, 
no respect in which he gave more frequent offence to 
those who were accounted specially pious than in 
regard to the Sabbath. 

And here he constantly appealed, with a silencing 
effect, to the great tribunal of Nature, to the natural 
sense of humanity: ''What man of you, having an 
ox or an ass fallen into a pit, will not instantly pull 
him out on the Sabbath-day ?" *' How" much more 
valuable is a man than these !'^ 

There is no characteristic, by the way, of the teach- 
ings of Jesus more striking than the deference which 
they pay throughout to man's native sense of right, 
since so greatly disparaged. He submits even the 
Divine ways to human judgment : '' If ye, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts to your children, how 
much more shall your Father who is in heaven 



136 JESUS 

give his own blessed spirit to them that ask it I" The 
parables of the lost sheep, of the lost piece of money, 
and of the Prodigal Son, are all appeals to this same 
native sense of right. And this it is in every human 
breast that Jesus recognized in so many v^ords when 
he said that ''that servant who knew his master's 
will, and prepared not himself, neither did according 
to his will, will be beaten with many stripes. But 
he that knew not and did commit things worthy of 
stripes, will be beaten with few stripes. For unto 
whomsoever much is given, of him will be much re- 
quired : and to whom men have committed much, of 
him they will ask the more." 

But to return. On one occasion there was present 
in the synagogue, in which Jesus was teaching, a 
man who had lost the use of his hand, probably 
from nervous debility. How the case was brought 
to the knowledge of Jesus is not stated. His com- 
passion was, doubtless, appealed to in the man's be- 
half. And he was, in all likelihood, the more dis- 
posed to listen to the appeal when he saw that there 
were those present who were on the watch to see 
whether he would cure the man, with the manifest 
design of accusing him of breaking the Sabbath. It 
was not his power, be it observed, that he wanted to 
prove, but it was the right and the duty of dis- 
charging the offices of humanity on that day equally 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS 13t 

with other days, that he sought to assert. His foes 
had seen before that he did not hesitate to do things 
on the Sabbath which, by the sensation that they 
caused, broke in upon the usual monotonous formality 
of the day. So bitter was their hatred of him that 
these narrow-minded and bigoted sticklers for the 
letter and the forms of religion would gladly convict 
him of sacrilege and compass his death. 

Jesus bade the man with a withered hand stand 
forth. Is it to be imagined that the man took the 
required position without emotion ? Did he not stand 
there all in a tremble in that moving presence, with 
all those eyes upon him, not knowing what was to be 
done next ? 

Having bidden the man to take his place where all 
might see him, Jesus turned to the men who were 
watching him, thirsting for his life, and asked them, 
*^ Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do evil, 
to save life, or to kill ?" that is, ^* Which is violating 
the Sabbath, I or you ; I, who would do this man a 
service, or you, who would destroy me?'' They 
answered never a word. How could they ? Casting 
on them a look of indignation and sorrow, he turned 
to the man and said, '' Stretch out your hand !" and 
instantly out went the hand. 

Observe, Jesus did not touch the enfeebled limb, or 
make any application to that. He addressed the man 

13 



138 JESUS 

himself. And with that tone of authority which came 
from the extraordinary strength of his convictions, and 
by which the people were so much struck, commanded 
him to extend his hand. And the man himself it 
was who moved the withered limb. Overpowered 
by the awe in which he stood of Jesus, hardly know- 
ing what he did, and not knowing at all how he did 
it, but conscious 'only of a sudden and irresistible con- 
viction that he could move his hand, he obeyed, and 
could not help obeying, the command of Jesus. 

Thus publicly did Jesus confound and put to shame 
those fierce religionists, who, when they found they 
could make no way against him on the score of reli- 
gion, went and sought alliance, so it is related, with 
a party whom they hated only less than they feared 
and hated him: the Herodians, the adherents of Herod 
Antipas, who derived his princely authority from the 
Imperial Government at Rome, and whose partisans, 
consequently, acknowledged the Roman Emperor as 
the lawful head of the Jewish nation. By the help 
of this party the Pharisees hoped to entangle Jesus 
politically, and caus^ him to be suspected and arrested 
jas a seditious disturber of the public peace. 

Once more Jesus was charged with disregarding 
the traditions of the elders, in that he took no care 
that his disciples should wash their hands before eat- 



CHARGES AGAINST JESUS I39 

ing, which was accounted a positive religious duty. 
This charge he met with an overwhelming retort, 
flinging back upon those who cavilled at him thus, 
the accusation of violating the most sacred command- 
ments of God by their traditions. '* The command of 
God is,'' said he, ''Honor thy father and thy mother, 
but you say, following your traditions, that if a man 
will devote to the service of religion the money where- 
with he might supply the necessities of his parents, 
he shall be freed from his filial obligations. Thus do 
you put human inventions in the place of divine laws." 
It was when he was thus brought into collision with 
the traditions handed down from a past generation, — 
which, ministering to the superstitious dread of per- 
sonal defilement from the mere external contact with 
certain persons and things, enjoined the scrupulous 
washing of hands and dishes and all the needed 
utensils before eating,-- that Jesus uttered those words 
of wisdom in which he warned the people that it is 
not what enters into us but what proceeds from us 
that defiles us. What enters into a man passes away. 
But from a man proceed evil thoughts and all manner 
of iniquity, and these it is that defile him. 



THE WOMAN CURED BY TOUCHING HIS CLOTHES 

It is related, as we have seen, that persons suffer- 
ing from disease were restored to health by merely 
touching the garments of Jesus. If only one or two 
instances of this kind occurred, they would amply 
suffice to give rise to the loose, general reports found 
in the Gospels. It may reasonably be questioned 
whether cases of this sort were numerous, since, great 
as the popular faith was in Jesus, it is not likely that 
the number was very large of those who were of a 
temperament so keenly sensitive to his influence as to 
be cured in this manner. 

In fact, only one case is reported with any particu- 
lars. And this case is peculiarly interesting, not only 
in itself, but because it illustrates in a remarkable 
manner the natural and artless character of the 
Gospel narratives. The case was this : 

A woman, who had been suffering for years from 

an infirmity which was wasting her life, and her 

living also, — as she had, at great expense, consulted 

many physicians without obtaining relief, — conceived 

( 14 ) ) 



WOMAISr CURED BY TOUCHING HIS CLOTHES 141 

the idea that, could she only get near enough to Jesus 
to touch his clothes, she would be well. A wild 
fancy, it seems to us. But consider the extraordinary 
state of things at the time, what wonders were hap- 
pening, what stories Were told of the power of Jesus, 
how great and universal the consequent excitement 
was, and how long years of suffering had sharpened 
the sense of this woman, and made her quick and 
eager to believe in any means of relief that might 
occur to her. She had seen Jesus, doubtless, and 
listened to him, and been thrilled to the inmost by his 
looks and tones, penetrated by the profoundest rever- 
ence for his person. It surely needs no great effort of 
the imagination to appreciate the probable state of 
this woman's mind, and to see how naturally she con- 
ceived the idea of being healed by touching him. 

As the infirmity under which she was suffering was 
unclean in the eye of the Levitical Law, she shrank 
from publishing it. She would fain be relieved with- 
out telling her sickness. She trusted to be cured 
without its being known. The crowd was so great 
that it was difficult for the weak woman to get near 
Jesus. Nevertheless, it was a matter of life and 
death to her, and, consequently, she threw her whole 
soul into the effort to approach him. And when she 
succeeded in getting within arm's length of his person, 

13* 



142 JESUS 

moved as she was by so extraordinary and powerful 
a conviction, is it to be supposed that she contented 
herself with merely timidly and uncertainly touching 
him with the tip of her finger ? Clutching for life, 
she grasped his garments with a quick, convulsive 
twitch, and instantly felt the touch thrilling and ener- 
gizing her whole frame, and knew that she was cured. 
Jesus was aware of something peculiar in the move- 
ment. He felt that some one had pulled at his 
clothes. And he surmised what it meant, — that it 
was some one who expected a healing influence in this 
way. He stopped and insisted upon knowing who it 
was who had seized hold of his garments. This he 
desired to ascertain, because, suspecting the purpose 
of the unknown, he wished to correct the mistaken 
idea that there was a medical virtue in his person, and 
to assure whomsoever it was that it was his or her 
own faith that could alone cure. His disciples won- 
dered that he could be so bent upon knowing who had 
touched him when such a crowd was pressing upon 
him. The woman, greatly frightened at what she 
had done, because she was self-convicted of having 
stolen the power which, as she imagined, had effected 
her instant cure, finding she must be discovered, came 
forward all in a tremble, and confessed the truth, and 
told her whole story. Jesus listened to her, addressed 
her by the affectionate appellation of ''Daughter,'' 



WO.WAN' CURED BY TOUCHING HIS CLOTHES 143 

bade her be of good heart, and assured her that it 
was her own faith that had cured her. 

Could we enter fully into the state of this woman^s 
mind, and sympathize with the veneration which she 
felt for Jesus, and which was deepened beyond 
measure by her long and weary sufferings, we should 
find' but little difficulty in crediting the story of her 
instantaneous restoration to health. The vital forces 
of her nature were stimulated into extraordinary 
activity. 

This passage of the History illustrates in a very 
satisfactory manner the artless and popular character 
of the Gospel narratives. The story is told by all the 
first three Gospels, with variations, however, which 
admit of being accounted for in a very natural 
way. 

The first Gospel relates the incident very briefly. 
It states that when the woman touched Jesus, he 
^^ turned about, and seeing her, said, Be of good cour- 
age, daughter! Your faith has made you well."^^ 
Nothing is said here about his inquiring who touched 
him. 

The second Gospel says that upon the woman^s 
touching him, Jesus, ^immediately perceiving ivithin 
himself that power had gone out of him,^^ turned to 
the crowd and asked who had touched his garments. 



144 j^strs 

Here it is to be observed that the narrator undertakes 
to explain how it was that Jesus knew that some one 
had touched him. The narrator, like the woman, sup- 
posed there was a medical virtue in the person of 
Jesus, by the departure of which he was physically con- 
scious that it had been drawn away from him. Such 
was the inference of the people around Jesus. But'that 
it was a mistaken inference, that there was no such 
curative power in his garments, and, of course, that it 
could not have been by perceiving it go out from him 
that he became aware of some one's having touched 
him, is evident from the fact that Jesus told the 
woman that it was her faith— not any healing virtue 
in his clothes — that had made her well. It was, I 
conceive, for the very purpose of correcting in the 
person, who had touched him, the error of supposing 
the power of curing disease to be in his garments, that 
he stopped and insisted upon knowing who it was 
that had touched him. 

In the third Gospel we have another version of the 
story. There it is stated that, when Jesus turned and 
inquired who had touched him, he said in so many 
words that he felt the power go out of him. This he 
could not possibly have said, for the reason already 
stated, because it contradicts what he told the woman 
immediately afterwards, namely, that it was her faith 
that had cured her. And it was for the very pur- 



W03IAJV CURED BY TOUCHING IIIS CLOTHES I45 

pose of giving the person concerned this assurance 
that he paused to inquire into the case. And be- 
sides, it is easy to see how the words, '^for I per- 
ceive that virtue has gone out of me," came to be 
put into his mouth. The bj-standers had no other 
thought than that his knowledge of some one's having 
touched him came to him in this way: by his feeling 
power go from him. When the story was once told 
as it stands in the second Gospel, and it was stated 
that Jesus, as the by-standers inferred, felt the de- 
parture of power from his person, the impression was 
readily and naturally taken that this inference had his 
authority, and that Jesus had himself said that he felt 
the power leave him. 

That the incident should be related in these different 
shapes is altogether natural. The way in which these 
variations arose is manifest. 

They show, moreover, that there was a truth in the 
incident, a meaning in the few words said by Jesus to 
the woman, which was not understood at the time. 
And thus the reality of the scene is attested alto- 
gether without design. 

Since these accounts are so popular in their struct- 
ure, and are never to be taken to the letter against 
what is true and probable, it is not necessary to sup- 
pose that Jesus, when he turned round, uttered the 



146 J US US 

precise words given: ^' Who touched meP^ He may 
have used a different form of inquiry, such as: ''Who 
pulled my clothes?'^ As the touching, however, was 
the essential and prominent particular, it may have 
modified the story as it was subsequently told. 



THE LITTLE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS 

When the woman pressed through the crowd to 
touch him, Jesus was on his way to a house whither 
he had been entreated by a man in great distress to 
go, Jah'us by name, and restore to health his little 
daughter, twelve years of age, then lying dangerously 
sick. Word was brought to him on the way that she 
had breathed her last, and it was suggested that it 
was needless for him to go to her, as she was past 
cure. He persisted, however, and when he reached 
the house, it was resounding with lamentations over 
the dead. He bade the people hush their cries, saying 
that the child was not dead but sleeping, and, not 
permitting any but her parents and two or three of 
his disciples to accompany him, went into the room 
where she lay and took her by the hand and called to 
her to rise up. And ''her spirit came again,'' it is re- 
lated, and the child arose, and he gave her to her 
parents, bidding them give her food, and charging 
those present to tell no one what was done. 

Now, whatever difficulty there may be in believing 

(147) 



148 JESUS 

that the dead child actually came to life again, we 
cannot but be struck with the conduct of Jesus on this 
occasion. So far from pretending to exercise any pre- 
ternatural power, he affirmed that the child was not 
dead; an assertion which he might well make, for to 
him she was not dead, if, holding death, as I believe 
that he did, to be a state of life, a sleep, he was strong 
in the conscious power to awaken her. He took no 
pains to summon disinterested witnesses. And when 
the little girl revived, he directed that nourishment 
should be given her, and he enjoined it upon those 
present to tell no one what had been done. 

The behavior of Jesus in this case, so entirely 
simple and direct, so impressively marked by the 
absence of everything like artifice, parade, or self-con- 
sciousness, so accordant with all that we have thus 
far perceived in him in relation to the singular physical 
effects by which his public course was attended, gives 
this passage a claim to thoughtful and candid consid- 
eration, incredible as the central fact, the restoration 
of the child to life, may appear. 

1. On this, as on every previous occasion of a so- 
called miracle, Jesus, be it observed, made no applica- 
tion of any mysterious power to the body. He 
addressed himself to the mind. He spoke directly to 
the child. 

2. But how could there be any action of Faith in 



THE LITTLE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS 149 

this instance ? Can the dead have faith ? Unanswera- 
ble as this query may be thought to be, to affirm that 
they cannot is begging the great question. Jesus, it 
would seem, took it for granted that they can. He 
evidently did not regard death as the extinction of 
conscious personal existence, 

3. Is it impossible to conceive that between children, 

" Over whom their Immortality 

Broods like the Day," 

and him, who held them in such reverence that 
he said that of such is the heavenly kingdom, there 
may have existed hidden, vital sympathies, which 
justified Jesus in the faith that the little girl, though 
dead, could hear and obey his voice, and by means 
of which she did hear it, and reanimate her body ? 
Have we penetrated the meaning of Wordsworth's 
inspired Ode ? 

4. Hitherto, in order to account for these extraordi- 
nary physical phenomena, we have not been under 
the necessity of supposing any peculiar, wonder-work- 
ing gift in Jesus. Nor is there any need of the sup- 
position in this case. The effects produced by him 
have been thus far explicable by reference to the ex- 
traordinary state of mind in the people at large and 
in all suffering persons especially, caused by the eom- 
manding presence of Jesus inseparable from the in- 

U 



150 JESUS 

born greatness of his character. But how is it con- 
ceivable that any influence of this kind could have 
wrought to bring the dead child to life ? 

Although we may not be able to apprehend how 
her faith — the native, unconscious faith of childhood, 
one with its essential being — could have been active 
after death, yet it may have been so, nay, it was so, 
if, as Jesus taught, faith is the property and act of that 
within us which never dies. And, moreover, may not 
any deficiency of the vitalizing power in her have been 
made up for by the profound faith of Jesus ? His 
faith in Faith, strong as we may believe it was, — how 
could it be, as I have already intimated, but that it was 
quickened and deepened beyond measure by the many 
and imposing manifestations of the power of Faith 
that he was daily witnessing ? He must have been 
enlightened and impressed by them far more than any 
one else, because he saw far deeper into things than the 
people around him. And as his faith thus grew, there 
was naturally developed in him an intuitive and irre- 
sistible consciousness of power to recall the child to 
life. Certain it is that he resorted to the boldest 
forms of speech to give expression to his sense of the 
power of Faith. ^'Let a man have faith," he said, 
^' only as a grain of mustard-seed, and he can overturn 
mountains." Again he said, '^AU thing are possible 
to him that believes ;'^ that is, All things possible in 



THE LITTLE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS 151 

their nature are possible to Faith. We forget the pre- 
eminent wisdom of him of whom we are speaking, if, 
neglecting to limit these universal terms as we are 
bound to do, we understand him as meaning to say 
that any wild dream of fancy, any whim of a childish 
love of power, or self-display, is possible to Faith. 
Fancying one's self to believe is not believing. We 
do not necessarily believe because we say or think we 
believe. It is not in our power to have faith in what 
is not an object or cause of faith. What Jesus 
aflSrmed is, that to faith which is faith and no delusion, 
in other words, to a conviction of mind, which is in 
consonance with reason and the nature of things, all 
things are possible. 

Now in the case of Jesus at the bedside of the dead 
child, what mark is there wanting of such a faith, and 
of the absence of all that betokens self-reference or a 
false state of mind ? He makes of no account his own 
agency in the revival of the little girl, and does all 
that he can to conceal it, and this in the directest and 
most natural manner conceivable. And as to the 
faith of so powerful a person as he in his ability to 
call her back to life, who shall presume to say that 
it was inconsistent with the nature of things? 
The things concerned were Life and Death. How 
much do we know of the nature of these mys- 
terious things ? Assuredly not enough to authorize 



152 JESUS 

us to assert that, from the nature of Life and Death, 
the restoration of the dead child was, under the 
circumstances, impossible. We may know more. 
We shall know more. We shall have knowledge of 
the nature of Death unspeakably cheering when 
we penetrate the significance of the Life of Jesus. 
And then, too, we shall see that the child awoke 
at his voice from the deep sleep of death as naturally 
as, when in health, at the call of her mother, she 
awoke in the morning from the lighter slumber of 
the night. 



THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS 

The family of Jesus, his mother and brothers, as 
it appears, were alarmed and made anxious by the 
course he was pursuing. ^ 

The anxiety of his near kindred on his account, by 
the way, is one of the proofs of the fabulous character 
of the stories told about his miraculous birth, stories, 
which did not come into existence until after his 
death, when the wonderfulness of his life gave rise to 
such fables, and rendered them credible. Supposing 
them to be true, we look in vain in his history for 
traces of the effect which such extraordinary things 
as they relate ought to have had. He himself never 
intimated that he came into life in a peculiar and pre- 
ternatural manner. He never made any allusion to 
his birth at all. 

And his mother and brothers, had they known that 
there was anything out of the order of nature in re- 
gard to his birth, would hardly have ventured to ques- 
tion the wisdom of his conduct, nor would they have 
suspected that he was out of his mind (Mark, iii. 21). 

U* (153) 



]54 JESUS 

Indeed, it is said in the Fourth Gospel that his brothers 
put no faith in him (John, vii. 5). 

As it was, he had lived with his kindred so long in 
their humble sphere, occupied with the same homely- 
affairs that made up their lives, that now, when he 
had forsaken his home, and was going about the 
country, followed by great crowds, they knew not 
what to make of it. They had doubtless long seen 
that he was not like them. But, singular as his 
words and his conduct had often appeared, they were 
not prepared for the sensation he was making far 
and wide. They did not understand him, and feared 
that he was '' beside himself," and would get into 
trouble. When they found what powerful enemies 
he was raising up, — how his course was condemned 
by teachers of the Law and persons of eminent 
respectability, they were still more alarmed on his ac- 
count. In order to save him from the dangers which 
they saw threatening him, and of which, as it seemed 
to them, he was not aware, they determined to go 
after him, hoping, I suppose, to withdraw him from 
that tumultuous life and induce him to return home 
with them. They found him with a great crowd col- 
lected around him. They could not get near him. 

The circumstances of the occasion are so interesting 
in themselves, and for the truthlike manner in which 
they are related, that I cannot deny myself the pleas- 



THE MOTHER AND BROTIIEBS OF JESUS 155 

ure of dwelling on them here, although I have little 
or nothing to add to the exposition of this passage of 
the history, Avhich I have given elsewhere. But if 
the original narrative may be read over and over 
again with interest, shall not a fuller elucidation of it 
bear to be repeated, especially since it will directly 
help the purpose of these pages : to establish the 
Historical truth of the Accounts of Jesus? 

There had just been brought to Jesus a man 
who was suffering from some nervous weakness 
that deprived him of the power of speech, and he 
was consequently believed to be under a malign 
spiritual influence (Matth. xii. 22-50). Brought into 
the presence of Jesus, beneath the eye and at the 
voice of this extraordinary person, the object of uni- 
versal wonder and veneration, the man instantly 
recovered the use of his tongue, whereat the crowd 
that was gathered round was filled with astonishment. 

Among the exclamations that broke forth, the ques- 
tion was bruited, ^' Is not this the son of DavidV^ the 
descendant, so ardently expected, of that illustrious 
Prince, the very Messiah. Certain Pharisees pres- 
ent, hearing this idea suggested, were transported 
with rage. ''What! this miserable Nazarene, whom 
nobody knew anything about, this associate of the 
vilest of the rabble, this wine-drinker, this despiser 
of the sacred Sabbath, the son of David!" It was 



156 JESUS 

not to be endured. True, the dumb man had been 
made to speak. The fact could not be denied. But 
how was it done ? In their desperation, they could 
see only one explanation. He must be helped by the 
Devil. He must be in league, not with any ordinary 
evil spirit, but with the very prince of evil spirits, 
with Beelzebub himself. 

In thus accounting for what Jesus had just done, 
those Pharisees virtually confessed that the power 
which had been shown was above the known power 
of man, and by ascribing it to the greatest of the evil 
spirits, they betrayed what they thought, that it was 
far beyond any power of man known to them. 

But since it was a power for good and not for evil, 
beneficent and not hurtful, Jesus was shocked and in- 
dignant to the last degree at the base calumny, at the 
incorrigible depravity evinced in pronouncing evil 
what was only good, confounding and reversing the 
plainest and the most sacred distinctions, calling God 
Beelzebub. He repelled the charge with the greatest 
warmth, piling argument upon argument to show, its 
outrageous absurdity. 

^' Every kingdom,'^ said he, ^' every city, every house, 
which is at discord within itself, is brought to ruin. 
If Satan cast out Satan, he is fighting against himself, 
and how can his kingdom stand ? If I cast out spirits 
by the aid of Beelzebub, by whom do your children 



THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS 15Y 

(that is, those whom you patronize, the professional 
exorcists of the day) cast them out? They shall con- 
demn you. But if I east out spirits by the power of 
God, then has the kingdom of God come close to you. 
How can one enter and plunder a strong man^s house, 
unless he has first overpow^ered the strong man ? The 
common proverb, ^ He that is not with me is against 
me,' might teach you better : I am not with Satan, I 
am not doing his work, and therefore I am against 
him. You might say anything against me, a man, and 
it would be pardonable. But when you call the mani- 
fest beneficent power and spirit of good, evil, when 
you speak evil of the very spirit of God, you blas- 
pheme, and you are unpardonable. When in the 
plainest good you can see only evil, there is no hope 
of you now or ever. There is no forgiveness for you,'' 
— no forgiveness because no repentance. 

Such I conceive to be the purport of his indignant 
protest against the gross perversity that could stigma- 
tize a plain act of humanity as the work of the Evil 
One. He expressed himself with intense earnestness. 
Using the strong, unqualified language of deep emo- 
tion, he is not to be understood as speaking to the 
letter, and as if he deliberately intended to assert that 
there is a sin which, being forsaken, will not be for- 
given, or that there is any sin that may not be re- 
pented of. He was full of the particular case before 



158 JESUS 

him, — shocked above measure at hearing the work of 
God ascribed to the Devil. Strong feeling never 
pauses to make exceptions or qualifications. It leaps 
at once to the use of general and universal terms. 

In the mind of Jesus, as we may learn from more 
than one passage (Mark, ii. 5 ; Luke, vii. 47), Re- 
pentance and Forgiveness are one, different names for 
the same thing. In the Penitent he beheld the For- 
given. And when he pronounced those past forgive- 
ness who brought this shameless charge against him of 
being assisted by the Evil One when he was doing 
good and good only, it was because they seemed to 
him, shocked as he was at such inveterate depravity, 
to be hopelessly impenitent. How could they ever 
be moved by good thoughts when they thus blas- 
phemed the Holy Spirit from which alone all good 
thoughts come ? 

So overwhelming was his reply to this blasphemous 
charge that it appears to have touched the hearts of 
these Pharisees, hardened as they were. For, as is 
related, immediately after, some of this class, approach- 
ing him in tones of respect, giving him the honored 
title of Teacher, spoke and said that they desired a 
sign from him. 

This desire for a sign has a peculiar significance. 
It was not a mere miracle that was wanted. It 
appears to have been the expectation of the Jews 



THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS 159 

that, when the Messiah should come, he would do 
some act that would be a sign, or signal, whereby he 
might at once be identified as the Messiah beyond the 
possibility of mistake. What precisely the expected 
sign was to be does not appear, and, probably, was 
not known, except that it would be some act conforma- 
ble to the popular idea of the Messiah as a military 
and kingly personage and confirmatory of that idea. 
*' The Jews,^^ says Paul (I. Cor. i. 22), ''require a 
sign.^^ And Jesus was once asked by his disciples 
what the sign would be of the coming of the Messiah 
(Matth. xxiv. 3). 

When, therefore, the Pharisees desired a sign from 
Jesus, it would seem to imply that they were so much 
impressed by what he had just done and said that all 
that was then wanting to their full satisfaction was 
that he should give them a sign. It was as if they 
had said, '' Teacher, you certainly have done and said 
wonderful things. Only give us now a sign, and we 
will believe you.'' But as he was not the Messiah 
that they had set their hearts upon, he could give 
them no sign such as they wanted. And so he told 
them. He could give them no sign but the sign of 
the prophet Jonah, to whose preaching in Nineveh 
he compared his own preaching to that generation.* 

* The allusion in the second and third Gospels to the prophet 
Jonah makes no mention of the resurrection of Jesus. It 



160 JUSUS 

And then he proceeded to describe the well-known 
case of a possessed man or maniac. When any one 
was subject to fits of nervous excitability the popular 
belief was that he was the victim of an evil spirit, 
who came and went with these periodical attacks. 
When the disease grew worse and the paroxyms 
became more violent, it was supposed that the number 
of foul spirits, possessing the man, was increased. 
These familiar ideas Jesus employed to illustrate the 
moral condition of that generation as represented by 
those Pharisees who charged him with being in league 
with the Devil. This charge showed that they were 
possessed by the evil spirit who sees evil in good. 
When, with altered tone, they addressed him respect- 
fully and asked for a sign, the evil spirit appeared to 
have left them. But the appearance was delusive. 
The spirit had quitted them only for awhile and gone 
away to the arid deserts, the supposed home of 
demons. The sanity of their victims was but for a 
season. The foul spirit would return, bringing with 
him seven other spirits worse than himself. The un- 



is simply a comparison of the position of Jesus to that of 
Jonah : as Jonah appeared warning the people of ]^ineveh, 
so Jesus was warning that generation. The reference in the 
Gospel of Matthew to the likeness between Jesus in the grave 
and Jonah in the belly of the whale, looks very much like a 
gloss. 



THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS 161 

belief of these men would return with sevenfold 
strength, and their last condition would be worse than 
the first. 

It was while Jesus was thus talking to the people 
with the greatest earnestness, with his whole mind 
and heart in what he was saying, that he was 
abruptly broken in upon, as we read (Matth. xii. 46), 
by a voice calling to him that his mother and brothers 
were there, outside the crowd, — '^ the people were 
gathered thick together''^ (Luke, xi. 29), — wanting to 
speak with him. 

So absorbed was he in what he was saying that for 
an instant he forgot himself and all that belonged to 
him. He was lost in the Truth. Have we not here an 
exquisite touch of Nature ? The soul has stronger 
affinities than those of blood. It is from such a 
passage as this that M. Renan draws the inference 
that Jesus was insensible to his natural ties ! Only 
they know how to love their kindred truly whose 
love of God is supreme. They would love father and 
mother less if they did not love Truth more. It is as 
natural as it is conceivable that the most loving of 
sons and brothers should be so given, heart and soul, 
to the Highest and Best, as, occasionally, for brief 
moments, to lose all thought of everything else. 
Thus was it with Jesus on this occasion. 

If, in his devotion to the high and dear purpose of 
15 



162 JESUS 

his life, he, for an instant, forgot his mother, he re- 
membered her afterwards in an hour of agony so 
severe that he might well be pardoned if he had had 
then no thoughts but of himself. 

How well, by the way, does this incident show 
what Jesus meant when he said to the people who 
were following him, that if a man would truly follow 
him he must rise above all private and personal con- 
siderations and be as insensible to his dearest ones 
and to his own life as if he hated them ! Truly he 
meant what he said, and he required nothing of others 
that he did not practise himself. 

In the account which I have thus given of this 
passage in the Life of Jesus I have followed the first 
Gospel. The second tells the story substantially in 
the same way. But in the third, the coming of his 
mother and brothers after him is told in another place, 
not in this connection. No mention is made of them 
in Luke's narrative of the cure of the dumb man and 
the blasphemy of which the Pharisees were guilty. 
But it relates that as Jesus ^^ spake these things^^ a 
woman in the crowd ^'lifted up her voice,^^ i.e. cried 
aloud, "Blessed is the mother that bore thee, and the 
breasts that gave thee nourishment ?'' Does not this 
incident imply the mention which, according to the 
other Gospels, was made on this occasion of his 
mother ? It was because her ear caught that notice 



THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS 163 

of his mother by some one in the crowd that this 
woman was prompted thus to exclaim, as if she had 
said, **Your mother! What a happy woman the 
mother of such a son must be !" By this exclamation, 
breaking almost involuntarily from her lips, she virtu- 
ally continued the interruption, and, as is interesting 
to note, with the same annoying effect upon the 
mind of Jesus, as is apparent from his reply to her 
benediction upon his mother. ^^ Blessed rather,^^ he 
exclaimed in return, ^^ are those who hear the word 
of God and keep it P^ The form of this utterance 
betrays his emotion. It is general, universal, the 
very language of deep feeling. As he said these 
words, I cannot help thinking, he turned towards the 
woman from whom had come that well-meant but un- 
seasonable ejaculation. She took his reply, general as 
it was in its terms, it is equally natural to suppose, 
as aimed directly at herself. She shrank back covered 
with confusion, feeling herself rebuked. The keen eye 
of Jesus read her soul ; and, therefore, when he turned 
and pointed to his disciples, saying, *' Behold my 
mother and my brothers P^ in what he adds he in- 
troduces the sisterly relation, — '^for whosoever does 
the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is 
my mother and sister and br other, ^^ 



FALSE WONDERS 

As there are not a few who, under the lead of 
Strauss, have come to look upon the whole story of 
Jesus, contained in the Four Gospels, as a collection 
of myths, I have sought to make visible its historical 
features, to show that, in substance, it has the full 
warrant of reason, nature, and probability. And I 
know not what better vouchers for its truth than these 
can be demanded for any history. 

I do not, however, question that there are legends, 
myths, or whatever they may be named, in the Gos- 
pels. The stories of the birth of Jesus I believe to 
be of this character. 

The existence of fables in these writings is far, how- 
ever, from authorizing the presumption that the whole 
history is fabulous. It suggests directly the opposite 
inference. The imagination is not stimulated to the 
creation of fables, or to credit fables when invented, 
unless something extraordinary has occurred to excite 
it. So invariably is it the case that real wonders give 
occasion for a multitude of false ones, that I should 
(164) 



FALSE WONDERS 165 

consider the actual history of Jesus to be lacking in 
most important evidence of its truth were there no 
fables and exaggerations mixed with it. Where there 
is the fire of truth there must be the smoke of fable. 
Such stories of the birth of Jesus never would have 
been suggested or found credible had not his life been 
so extraordinarily great as to give color to the idea 
that he could not have been born as other men are. 
Neither he himself nor any one else during his life- 
time ever alluded to his birth as extraordinary. The 
story of it, as we find it in the first Gospel, evidently 
did not come into existence until after his death. 

There are several things told of him which it is 
difiicult to accept as they stand. They are not in 
keeping with him, or with reason or probability. 
They are either fictions or ordinary occurrences ex- 
aggerated. In either light, they do not affect our 
idea of him or lessen his greatness. 

In the story, for instance, of his telling Peter to go 
and catch a fish, and in the mouth of the fish a piece 
of money would be found wherewith to pay the 
Roman tax, I find nothing like Jesus. The story has 
an apocryphal sound. Whether it is a pure fiction or 
an ordinary incident magnified, I do not know. 

So also the manner in which upon two occasions 
Jesus is related to have fed some thousands is so re- 

15* 



166 JESUS 

lated as to give the impression that it was done by a 
preternatural multiplication of a few loaves and fishes; 
although, if such were the case, there is hardly a hint 
of the effect upon the minds of the people, — of the 
astonishment which such an act must have produced. 
It is not likely that the numbers present, five thousand 
at one time, three thousand at another, should be 
stated with precision. It is related that when Jesus 
told his disciples that the multitude needed to be fed, 
and inquired what food there was to supply the de- 
mand, the disciples knew of only one individual, a 
young man, who had brought food with him. Is it 
likely that they could have known whether or not 
others, in that large multitude, had brought food also ? 
Or is it probable that only one person, and that a 
young man, was provident enough to have brought 
bread with him ? There seems to have been plenty 
of baskets for the fragments that were collected after 
the people were fed. The real state of the case, pos- 
sibly, was, that when Jesus had got the multitude 
arranged in some order, seated on the ground in 
groups of fifty each, his example in distributing the 
loaves and fishes among those immediately around 
him led such as had refreshments with them to share 
their supplies with others in like manner. But 
whether this was what took place, or how the story 
is to be understood, I cannot tell. 



FALSE WONDERS 1G7 

There are various incidents in the Gospels which 
are represented to have taken place in express fulfil- 
ment of ancient prophecies. But the passages of the 
Old Testament, cited as predictions of the occurrences 
related, have only a fanciful application to them, and 
there is no ground for believing that they were re- 
garded as having a prophetic significance until after, 
and some time after, the events to which they are ap- 
plied took place. So that what are represented as 
prophecies fulfilled are mere parallelisms, such as are 
constantly occurring in human affairs, or fanciful coin- 
cidences which the authors of the Gospel narratives, 
being Jews, and holding their Sacred Scriptures in 
idolatrous veneration, as the depositaries of all knowl- 
edge, were led to represent as verifications of Old 
Testament prophecies. 

The first Gospel states, for instance, that Jesus rode 
into Jerusalem upon an ass, "• that it might he fulfilled 
which was spoken by the prophet, saying , Tell ye the 
daughter of Sion, Behold thy king cometh to thee, 
meek, and sitting upon an as6'." The Fourth Gospel 
quotes the same passage from Zechariah, and makes 
the same application of it (ch. xii. 14, 15). But the 
writer. naively adds, ''These things understood not the 
disciples at the first, but when Jesus was glorified, 
then remembered they that these things were written 
of him,^^ thus furnishing us with a key to the manner 



168 JUSUS 

in which these quotations from the Old Testament 
were applied. They were after-thoughts. 

Again, passages are adduced as prophecies from the 
ancient Scriptures having reference to Jesus, which, 
in their original connection, obviously have not even 
the form of predictions : as, for example, where it is 
said that Jesus spoke in parables, ^^ that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I 
will open my mouth in parables,'^'' etc. (Matth. xiii. 35). 
So that it would seem that whatever occurrences in 
the life of Jesus admitted of being described in the 
language of the Old Testament, the writers of the 
Gospels represented as happening, for the express pur- 
pose of verifying that language. 

It is curious to note that the particulars described 
as answering to ancient prophecies are, for the most 
part, comparatively speaking, of a trivial character. It 
is almost always some little accident of the scene that 
is represented as verifying a prediction of the old 
prophets, which shows very strikingly that the sub- 
stance of the Life of Jesus, the main facts, were too 
stubbornly original to be bent and accommodated to 
the Jewish prophecies. Only here and their, comes 
some little circumstance that admits of being described 
as the carrying out of an Old Testament prediction, 
and this the Jewish authors of the Gospels seize upon 
eagerly. It is true, Strauss would fain make it appear 



FALSE WONDERS 169 

that the whole history of Jesus was, in a manner, sug- 
gested by the Old Testament. For every fact he finds 
a parallel and precedent in the Ancient Scriptures. 
Were it so, the writers of the Gospels, who catch at 
every circumstance that appears to fulfil the language 
of the old prophets, would hardly have left it to an 
acute German of the nineteenth century to point it 
out. 



PURPOSE AND METHOD 

We cannot determine the order in which the events 
related to have taken place in Galilee, occurred. Nor 
is it at all important, as Jesus does not appear to have 
been engaged in the execution of any definite plan. 
He organized nothing, gathered no church. He never 
baptized any one, nor did he require any formal adhe- 
sion to his person or the observance of any initiatory 
rite, as preliminary to all else that was required. He 
bade seekers of truth and life, who came to him, to 
keep the Commandments, to imitate the humane 
Samaritan. He had friends whom he loved, such as 
Lazarus and his sisters, who took no formal, public 
part with him ; neither does it appear that he expected 
them to do so. It was not personal followers that he 
was bent upon collecting around him, but the spirit 
of self-sacrifice and fraternal love which he sought 
to inspire and diffuse. While he expressed his own 
sense of truth in terms and with an air of the highest 
authority, never did teacher pay such homage as he 
to the reason and consciences of men. And all his 
(HO) 



PURPOSE AND METHOD 1^1 

utterances go to make every man judge for himself 
what is right. 

A great, prominent purpose of his appears to have 
been to arouse the attention of his countrymen to the 
Crisis in the condition of the nation, which, with his 
clear insight into the indications of the time, he saw to 
be impending. He did not consider himself called to 
go beyond the boundaries of his own country. He 
chose twelve, and again seventy, from among those 
who attended him most faithfully, to go abroad, two 
by two, over the land and warn the people of the ap- 
proach of the so-called kingdom of heaven and sum- 
mon thewi to amend their lives ; and he gave these 
messengers rules of eminent prudence to be observed 
in the discharge of the duty which he laid upon them. 

To the popular mind the kingdom of heaven signi- 
fied the coming of a prophet and king, specially ap- 
pointed by the God of Israel to fulfil the glowing 
predictions of the ancient seers and deliver the nation 
from the power of Rome and raise it to a state of 
unprecedented greatness. It was this vision that in- 
flamed the hearts of the people and their spiritual 
leaders. Accounting themselves the chosen of Heaven 
and all other nations but as dogs in comparison, they 
were stung to the quick by the humiliating conscious- 
ness of national subjection. They thirsted for vengeance 
upon their Gentile masters, and indulged in the wildest 



It2 JESUS 

dreams of temporal prosperity. It was the proud, 
fierce temper of the nation, causing it to chafe against 
the Roman authority, that was sure to bring on a col- 
lision with that mighty power by which it would be 
ground to powder. This Jesus plainly foresaw. To his 
prophetic vision, the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem 
was to become a ruin, not one stone left upon another. 

The only salvation for the people, collectively and 
personally, was in a temper directly the reverse, in a 
spirit of patience which no suffering nor injuries could 
exhaust, and in a humanity that acknowledged an ex- 
ample to be followed in the despised Samaritan. It 
was this spirit that breathed from the words and the 
person of Jesus. To his large vision, the kingdom 
of God was within, in those affections of the soul 
which attest the moral government of the world, 
those divine laws, which were about to be signally 
demonstrated in the downfall of Israel, and in the 
introduction of the better state of things to follow the 
cleansing and enlargement of the hearts of men, and 
the germ and prophecy of which he carried, as I have 
said, in himself. 

He is recorded to have declared that God alone 
knew — he did not — at what hour the doom of his 
country would be consummated. In fact his prophecy 
of the destruction of Jerusalem was fulfilled about 
thirty years afterwards. 



PURPOSE AND METHOD 173 

If he appears to have- anticipated, as immediately 
to succeed, a better state of things than has yet, after 
the lapse of nineteen centuries, been realized, it ought 
not to lessen our admiration of his far prophetic 
sight. We may well be astonished, not that he did 
not see farther into the future, but that he saw so 
far. With his profound faith in Truth and his inspir- 
ing consciousness of its power, was it not natural that 
he should expect its speedy and complete triumph, 
especially when the iron wall of Jewish pride, which, 
naturally enough must have seemed to him the one 
great obstacle in its way, should, with the idolized 
Temple, be humbled to the dust ; although, who ever 
recognized more fully than he the fact that Truth, 
however mightily enforced, must wait for its influ- 
ence over men until they choose to receive it? 

In himself, the great kingdom of Righteousness had 
already come, and to extend its empire he devoted 
himself unreservedly. How irrevocably he had made 
up his mind to accept the fearful fate that awaited 
him, how clearly, with the same insight with which 
he foresaw the ruin of his country, he foresaw also 
that the course he was pursuing could have but one 
ending, — an early, violent and ignominious death, — is 
evident in more passages than one. Once (we have 
already alluded to this incident in a different connec- 
tion), at a comparatively early period, when his popu- 

16 



1Y4 JESUS 

larity was at its height and a great multitude was 
following him, he warned them that whoever really 
meant to follow him must take the vile and cruel 
cross upon his shoulders and consider himself as on 
the way to execution. Unquestionably he was aware 
that this was his own position at that very moment. 
Remember his instant reply to the two of his disciples 
who, when he was on his way to Jerusalem, asked 
that they might have the seats on the right and left of 
the throne, which, in their simplicity, they believed he 
was then going to the capital to set up: '' Can you 
drink of the cup that I am to drink of, and endure the 
flood of suffering which I am to pass through?^/ At 
another time when all were filled with wonder at what 
he had done, and he seemed to be carrying everything 
before him, he bade his disciples let his words sink 
into their ears : he was about to be delivered, he said, 
into the power of men who would put him to death. 
And what shows his deep moral insight, not only did 
he know that he must come to a violent and shameful 
end, he saw, with equal clearness, that it was neces- 
sary to the effect and success of his life, as necessary 
as that the seed should fall into the ground and die 

that it may be productive. 

»■ 

. He had no method but the method of nature, and 
that he followed with an unconscious, filial faith. He 



PURPOSE AJSTD METHOD 1^5 

resorted to none of the instrumentalities without 
which no man nowadays can lift a finger. He made 
no appeal to the rich to aid him with their money. 
He told the wealthy young man that if he would join 
him in the cause of the world's regeneration he must 
first dispose of his possessions elsewhere. He availed 
himself of the simple means and opportunities which 
the hour and a good Providence offered, and which 
wait in such abundance upon every earnest purpose, 
that it seems now, in his case, as if he had enlisted all 
Nature and all Life in his service. He went not merely 
at certain times to certain places, but he went about 
daily, doing good, speaking words of truth and love as 
occasions offered. Most especially was he interested 
in the neglected and the outcast. He came, he said, 
to seek and save the lost — those who had lost them- 
selves. These had his heartiest sympathy. No thought 
of appearances or of the mutterings of bigoted Phari- 
sees ever deterred him from going among them as a 
friend, or receiving them kindly. Of ** publicans and 
harlots" he had more hope than of those whose hearts 
were eaten out by spiritual pride. When he went 
through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, out of all 
the crowd that were collected to see him, he chose for 
his host an odious tax-gatherer who had climbed into 
a tree to get sight of him as he passed, — and whose 
diminutive stature, by the way, was an additional 



176 JESUS 

cause, doubtless, for public contempt and ridicule, — so 
that people exclaimed, '' He has gone to be the guest 
of a man of bad character !'' What scene is there in 
his history, full as it is of striking incidents, more* 
touching than that presented at the Pharisee's table, 
at which the instant Jesus took the customary reclin- 
ing posture, an outcast woman came behind him, and, 
flinging herself down at his feet, began kissing them 
over and over again, wetting them with her tears, and 
wiping away the tears with her hair ! Uncompromis- 
ing as was the truth that he uttered, severe as was 
the language in which he spoke of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, his manner must have been singularly 
attractive, since women gathered around him, and 
children went to him without fear. 

Could the thick crust of superstition and familiarity 
which has grown over these artless Records be re- 
moved, language would afford us no terms that would 
not be all inadequate to express the sense we should 
have of the greatness and beauty of this most ex- 
traordinary character. 



THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MANKIND 

Most of the passages which we have noticed in the 
foregoing pages are accounts of very remarkable inci- 
dents. It would seem that an extraordinary number 
of remarkable things occurred in the life of Jesus. So 
numerous are they indeed, that, at first sight, some 
color is given to the suspicion that these Writings are 
but the offspring of the rude love of the marvellous. 
But when we examine these accounts one by one, we 
find that, such was the great character of Jesus, while 
the incidents related are as natural as they are re- 
markable, they could not well have been other than 
they are, since so extraordinary a person was there. 
Whatever he touched he made to breathe, to speak, to 
shine. 

It is not to my present purpose to. go through the 
'whole of the Four Gospels, and set forth all the 
historical truth which, it is clear to my mind, they 
contain. In, a little volume recently published, enti- 
tled ^'The Unconscious Truth of the Four Gospels,''^ 

16* rm) 



ns jESifs 

I have endeavored to indicate the marks of truth which 
may be found in the narratives of two of the most im- 
portant facts in the history of Jesus : the Raising of 
Lazarus, and the Resurrection of Jesus himself. To 
that work I beg leave to refer such of my readers as 
are interested in the present inquiry. 

My desire, in these pages, is simply to show that, 
whatever appearances of a fabulous, legendary, or 
mythical character these Records present, there is, 
running through them, underneath these appearances, 
underneath the modes of thought and language pecu- 
liar to the time and country in which their authors 
wrote, a pure piece of biography, a history, which, far 
as it is from completeness, gives us the idea of a 
person of most original and yet natural greatness, a 
person, so rich in every quality that commands confi- 
dence and inspires reverence and love, that, in becom- 
ing acquainted with him as one of ourselves, we are 
unconsciously learning to have faith in the highest 
Ideal, and a new sense is formed within us of the 
worth and sacred destiny of the race which has pro- 
duced such an instance of what it may become. 

It is because we have in the Personal Character of 
Jesus an all-inspiring revelation of what is, of what is 
in the nature that we all share with him, it is because 
in sympathy with him, faith and love and hope spring 



THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MANKIND 179 

up unbidden, like plants in the light and air and rain, — 
it is for this reason that to see him just as he was, 
is of all things most interesting. It is not from any 
theological propositions, however logically sound, it is 
not from any verbal precepts, however wise and pure, 
that we can draw the strength that we greatly need 
amidst the impenetrable mystery of Life. It is in 
the being of Jesus that the saving power of our Chris- 
tianity dwells. 

There is no religion that is of any value, however 
venerable its doctrines and its ceremonials, that is not 
rooted deep in faith in human virtue, that does not 
create an ever-growing trust in rectitude, in unselfish- 
ness, in whatever is good and noble. There can be no 
faith in God unless there is faith in Man. If we do 
not hold our brother sacred whom we see, how can 
we revere God whom we do not see ? There is no 
Divine goodness for us if we do not believe in human 
virtue. 

It is hard, however, to believe in man, seeing what 
we see, and daily conscious how pitiably we fail to 
realize the Right in ourselves, — hard, in the presence 
of the weakness and depravity that we witness and 
in which we share, to believe that the world of man- 
kind is ever to be raised to any high moral position. 
What complaints are heard every day of the wicked- 
ness of men, of the wide lack of common honesty, the 



180 J^SUS 

inveterate self-seeking, the hardness and sensuality 
that abound, and especially of the absence of all prin- 
ciple in the civil and political concerns of life! 

The amount of moral corruption is, doubtless, 
great. But I cling to the belief that, however abun- 
dant the evil that exists, good is still more abounding. 
This we must believe so long as we believe that Good 
is infinitely mightier and more active than Evil. 

The fact is, the Evil that exists fills the whole 
sphere of our vision and the Good passes uncom- 
puted, unnoticed, because the Evil is working in a 
world not made for Evil as it is made for Good. 
-Consequently, with all its cunning and although it 
would fain do its work without attracting observation, 
yet having to go against the grain of things, it must 
needs make a great noise and dust, and these fill our 
ears and eyes, so that we see not the good which 
Heaven, never idle, is doing, and doing silently be- 
cause everything is made to its hand- — not a whisper 
breaks on the ear— it is all a matter of course and 
therefore it goes unnoticed. 

But however this may be, the worst evil of the 
time or of anjrtime is when men lose faith in human 
virtue, in -human nature. When; faith in man is gone, 
farewell to faith in God, farewell to the possibility of 
-religion ! If, notwithstanding its utmost degradation, 
marred, scarred, polluted as it is, this human nature of 



THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MANKIND 181 

ours is not sacred, then is there nothing sacred. If 
the Highest does not shine upon us through Man, it 
shines nowhere. All is darkness impenetrable. Man 
alone of all known existences can give us any idea of 
moral good, of the sanctity and beauty of the spirit. 

The more degraded, therefore, men appear to be, 
the more gloomy the prospect, all the more vital to 
the salvation and elevation of the race is such a Life 
as that of Jesus. Let us once have an intelligent ap- 
preciation of that exalted virtue, a settled trust in that 
realization of all that is good and true, and then let 
the mystery of Being grow deeper, as it will with the 
advance of Science, let Iniquity abound and the very 
elect go astray, still we shall never despair. We 
shall still be of good cheer, for Life, with all its mys- 
teries and all its agonies, has been overcome. In 
Jesus, Humanity, notwithstanding all its weaknesses, 
is crowned lord and king. 

Thus is Jesus the life of life, and the imperishable 
hope of an unimaginable greatness. He is the pledge 
of a final triumph over all moral obstructions as com- 
plete as the ascendency which man is every day gain- 
ing over the physical world. Because he reigned, 
we shall reign also. In him we have full assurance 
of a power in our nature, to which, when once it as- 
serts its prerogative, what seem hindrances become 
helps, and to the presence of which the trust and ven- 



182 JESUS 

eration that Jesus inspires are witnesses, whose testi- 
mony, written in every man's consciousness, it is im- 
possible to question. 

It is not, then, in any peculiarity of his nature, nor 
in any mysterious relation that he sustains to the Su- 
preme, nor in any official position that he holds as the 
alleged Messiah, or Christ, of the Jews, but in the 
moral power of his Great Character that the incalcula- 
ble worth of the Man of Nazareth consists. This it is 
which, commanding the reverence of mankind, imper- 
fectly as it has been felt, is the hidden force that has 
thus far upheld the Religion built upon his words and 
his life against all assaults, and notwithstanding th^ 
gross abuses with which it has been loaded. 

I have no thought, as I have already intimated, of 
claiming for Jesus that he alone holds this vital re- 
lation to mankind, although he is pre-eminent in this 
respect. Heaven has not stinted its bounty in sending 
the great and good to inspire the weak with the 
strength that every soul of flesh needs in the struggle 
of life. The most orthodox authorities — St. Augustine, 
for example — have acknowledged that there is no re- 
ligion without some truth in it. All religions spring 
from the great ones of our race, who, whatever have 
been their defects, have always been inspired by some 
commanding truth. What shall we say, for instance, 



THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MANKIND 183 

of the religion of Buddha, the religion at this hour, 
as is computed, of nearly half a million millions of 
human beings, a religion, however fanciful its the- 
ology, venerable for its morality, teaching that all 
human goodness has its root in good will, charity ? 
Is such a religion to be stigmatized as a mere super- 
stition, or its author to be thought of otherwise than 
with reverence, without blaspheming the Providence 
that is over all ? To exalt Jesus, must we disparage 
all other guides and helpers of the world? Or is it 
to be supposed that the beneficent Power that has 
made provision, abundant and universal, for the 
physical wants of man, has left his higher and better 
nature without witness of th« same bountiful care ? 

The word Christ, being not the name of Jesus but 
a Jewish official title, we ought, to speak properly, 
always to say, Jesus the Christ. The dropping of 
the article has given, however, a mixed significance to 
the word, and it has become the name of the person 
as well as a title of office. 

To Jews it was a matter of great interest to recog- 
nize the promise of a Messiah fulfilled in Jesus. But 
are we Gentiles bound to be Jews, familiar with 
Jewish prophecies and Scriptures, before we can 
become disciples of Jesus? To us he is far more 
than the prophet of one people. The desire of all 
nations is fulfilled in him. 



184 JUS US 

It was because the first disciples, all Jews, had so 
constantly on their lips this word Christ,*- i.e. the 
Anointed (the title is derived from the Jewish custom 
of consecration by anointing), that some one, outside 
the associated disciples, — it was at Antioch this hap- 
pened, — hearing this word reiterated again and again, 
without caring to consider what it meant, nicknamed 
this new company, in derision, Christ-ians. The title 
took the popular ear, and went abroad, a term of 
ridicule and reproach, standing in public estimation 
for what was looked upon as a new and deadly 
superstition, — for, indeed, downright atheism. The 
most enlightened Romans regarded the designation 
Christians as another name for enemies of the human 
race. 

The word Christian occurs only three times in the 
New Testament: once in I. Pet. iv. 16, where the 
connection shows that it was a badge of suffering; 
and twice in the Book of Acts, first in ch. xi. 26, 
where it is stated that the disciples were first called 
Christians in Antioch, and again in ch. xxvi. 28, and 
here it is used by King Agrippa, the significance of 
whose exclamation, *' Almost thou persuadest me to 
be a Christian P^ as expressive of the powerful im- 



^ In the first ten verses of I. Cor. i. the word Christ occurs 
ten times. 



THE RELATION OF JESUS TO MANKIND 185 

pression made upon the king by Paul's eloquence, is 
missed, if it is not borne in mind what an opprobrious 
thing it was then to be called a Christian. So obnox- 
ious indeed was the name, that even Paul, in his reply 
to the king, quick as a flash though it was, instinct- 
ively shrank from taking it upon his lips : ^' I would 
to God," exclaimed he, '*that not only thou but all 
who hear me this day were both almost and al- 
together" — he does not say, Christians, but — '\such 
as I am !" Perhaps, if he had had time to think, 
he would not have evaded the odious title. Paul 
was not a man to be afraid of words. 

I wonder what the first friends of Jesus would have 
called themselves if this title of Christians, derisively 
given them in the first instance, had not clung to them, 
and become in time so popular that, whereas it was a 
shame and peril at first to bear it, it was subsequently 
disreputable and dangerous not to be so called. Their 
distinction was that they were lovers of righteousness, 
freedom, and peace. Would they not have chosen a 
name representative of these things invisible and eter- 
nal, and comprehending among the friends of Jesus 
every one who loves his fellow-men, regardless of all 
other distinctions ? But, considering how the plainest 
language, the explicit words of Jesus himself have 
been perverted, it may well be doubted whether they 
could have taken any name that would not very soon 

n 



18G JESUS 

have been made symbolical of the most un-Jesus-like 
exelusiveness. By whatever names men may call 
themselves, or be called by others, all that they can do 
is to render their designations synonymes of whatso- 
ever things are pure, honorable, and just, and then 
there can be no question of their being friends of Jesus. 



CLOSING SCENES 

I HAVE endeavored to make evident the handiwork 
of Truth in the early part of the history of the public 
life of Jesus. 

The closing scenes of the narrative, beginning with 
his final journey from Galilee to the metropolis, are, if 
possible, still more strongly characterized by the 
marks of a true history. 

After travelling about in Galilee, speaking words of 
warning and wisdom as opportunity offered, seeking to 
arouse the attention of his countrymen to the coming 
doom of the nation and to the need of a new life, he 
felt himself bound to go to Jerusalem, the seat of that 
spiritual despotism which was hurrying the people to 
destruction by fostering their proud and vengeful pas- 
sions, and imposing on them human traditions and dead 
formalities in the place of Justice and the Love of God. 

As he declared in the most explicit manner when on 
trial for his life, it was the purpose for which he was 
born, to bear witness to the Truth. But to bear this 

(187) 



188 JESUS 

testimony in Jerusalem, in the very presence of the 
spiritual leaders whom he had denounced, to lay bare 
their false pretensions at the centre of their power and 
to their very faces, was certain and swift death. Of 
this he was fully aware. This he told his disciples, 
when he turned his face towards the capital, must be 
his fate. 

But he saw with equal clearness that his death, 
under the circumstances, would, by the impression 
which it would make, be the strongest testimony possi- 
ble that he could bear to the power of the Truth. The 
best service he could render it was to die for it. 

He went to Jerusalem, therefore, into the thick of 
his enemies, without hesitation or fear, choosing for 
the time of his visit the occasion of the great national 
festival, the Passover, when the city would be full of 
strangers, people from the country, and so a large op- 
portunity be afforded for the publication of truth. 

On a certain day, he made a public entry into the 
city. As he had been charged with seditious designs, 
he rode in upon an ass, the emblem of peace. He was 
comparatively but little known to the inhabitants of 
the capital. They had only heard rumors of his say- 
ings and doings in distant Galilee, and of that recent 
wonder in their immediate neighborhood, the recalling 
of Lazarus from the grave. He was accompanied by 
a great crowd of country people, men, women, and 



CLOSING SCENES 189 

children, waving branches of the palm tree and filling 
the air with their acclamations. 

Unmoved by these imposing demonstrations of popu- 
lar favor, when he reached the descent of the Mount 
of Olives, where the city with its magnificent Temple 
broke upon his sight, tears filled his eyes, and there 
burst from his lips the pathetic ejaculation : *' O Jeru- 
salem ! Jerusalem I How often have I longed to 
gather you as a hen gathers her young under her 
wings, and ye would not !'' 

If, in all the Holy Land, there is a spot upon which 
a vision of the Man of Nazareth beams through the 
mists of ages, and comes distinctly before us, it is 
there, on the road from Bethany over the Mount of 
Olives, where Jerusalem opens fully on the sight, and 
where fell those immortal tears. 

Upon entering the city, he proceeded directly to the 
Temple, whose sacred precincts he found encroached 
upon by tables and booths set up there by traders 
whose business it was to exchange the coin of stran- 
gers, coming from a distance, for the currency of Jeru- 
salem needed to pay their Temple dues, and to 
provide those who purposed to present offerings and 
sacrifices, as prescribed by the Levitical law, with the 
necessary animals, oxen, and sheep, and doves. He 
ordered these traders instantly away. And, as he 

17* 



190 JESUS 

was attended bj a great throng of people, and as this 
act of purifying the sacred place by ridding it of these 
greedy money-worshippers fell in with the popular 
feeling, they fled at the first intimation of his will, and 
with such precipitation that the tables and benches 
were overturned in the confusion. 

The whip of small cords with which he is stated to 
have provided himself to drive the traders from the 
place was probably made on the spot, of a cord found 
lying there, belonging to some one of the owners of 
the animals, and used by him, if used at all, to drive 
the latter away. But the fact, just referred to, that 
Jesus was backed by the populace in this evidence of 
his respect for the sanctity of the Temple rendered 
any violence on his part unnecessary. The traders 
dared not make any resistance, and hastily retreated 
at the first word, well knowing that they had no right 
to be there. 

There were, doubtless, many circumstances that 
came to the knowledge of Jesus, not mentioned in the 
Gospels, which fully disclosed to him the deadly 
hatred which he had provoked, the machinations of 
his powerful enemies, the meditated treachery of one 
of his disciples, and the certainty that his death by 
crucifixion was resolved upon. 

Thus convinced that the end was at hand, he had 



CLOSING SCENES 191 

a natural and strong desire, it is stated, to spend a 
few hours in private with the little company of per- 
sonal friends, who had all along been devoted to him 
(Luke, xxii. 15). But when the opportunity was af- 
forded him, and they all assembled the evening before 
his arrest, the occasion Avas far from being what he 
had anticipated. Things occurred that, instead of 
comforting him, depressed him greatly. 

When they had taken their places at table, the 
breaking of the bread, and the flowing red wine, sud- 
denly suggested images of suffering and horror to his 
mind already overshadowed by the near approach of 
death. It was characteristic of him to see corre- 
spondences between visible objects and his own 
thoughts. It was in accordance with this habit of 
mind that he pointed the company to the resemblance 
between the broken bread and the red wine on the 
one hand, and his lacerated body and streaming blood 
on the other. That the resemblance struck his own 
mind with great force, and that he perceived it with a 
shudder, may be fairly inferred from the manner in 
which he indicated it: '^It is my body I'' ''It is my 
blood!'' The material objects, the bread and wine, for 
the instant vanished from before his eyes. He beheld 
only his own tortured body and flowing blood. It 
may well be doubted whether he ate a morsel of the 
bread. He would not taste a drop of the wine. It 



192 JUS US 

would have seemed to him like drinking his own 
blood. 

And then, again, he was wounded to the quick by 
the fact, for some time suspected but shortly before 
brought in one way or another fully to his knowl- 
edge, that one of his friends, one who had been wont 
to eat at the same table with him, was about to prove 
false to him, and was in communication with the 
Priests. He held it necessary to let his disciples 
know, in order that their faith in him might not be 
shaken, that he was aware of the contemplated treach- 
ery, that he was not about to be taken by surprise 
(John, xiii. 19). But he communicated the fact to 
them with evident reluctance, treating his false dis- 
ciple with the greatest magnanimity, forbearing to 
mention his name, pointing him out only to the best 
loved of them, and to him only in a whisper, unheard 
by the rest, and making no allusion to him after he had 
left the room. He referred to the fact once or twice 
remotely before he declared it in so many words, thus 
showing what an effort it cost him. 

Once more. It must have saddened him not a little 
to see his disciples, after all his teaching, wrangling, 
as the third Gospel states that they did, for pre- 
cedence, contending which of them should be first.* 

* Luke, xxii. 24. Luke states that there was a dispute 
among the disciples at the last Supper, but he connects with 



CLOSING SCENES 193 

The nature of the strife that arose among them then 
may be inferred from the remarkable way in which 
Jesus reproved them. They crowded and elbowed 
one another for the highest seats. To show them how 
wholly out of place these mutual jealousies were, he, 
their Master, as they called him, performed for them 
the humblest service of such an occasion, the office of 
a menial. He took a basin and towel and knelt down 
and washed their feet ! That was a lesson never to 
be forgotten to their dying day. 

So deeply was Jesus moved on that evening, so 
profound was the sadness that oppressed him, that 
then, for the first time, as it appears, his disciples 
became fully possessed with the idea that something 
terrible was about to happen, — that they were really 
about to lose him. Although he had told them long 
before, in the plainest terms, of his inevitable fate, yet 
always before they were so engrossed with their 
splendid Messianic visions and he had been sur- 
rounded by such admiring multitudes, that they could 
give no place to such dark thoughts. They could 
not bring themselves to believe that his language 
really had the dreadful meaning which it seemed to 
express. 

the mention of it what Jesus said, or what he had been under- 
tood to say, on previous and different occasions. 



194 JESUS 

But now no longer in their familiar Galilee but in 
the great crowded city, where they felt themselves 
strange and alone, when he, for w^hom they had for- 
saken their homes, and to whom they had looked to 
realize their brilliant dreams of wealth and honor, — 
when he was so sad, they caught the infection of his 
deep sadness, and mourned and wept, so that he, who, 
of all, stood most in need of comfort, put aside his 
own great sorrows to soothe theirs. 

The report of the consolations which he addressed 
to his weeping friends is given only in the Fourth 
Gospel. It has the appearance of having been written 
at a period after the death of Jesus when the Past was 
seen through the sacred halo which invests the de- 
parted, and consequently it is, in all probability, 
greatly amplified, and it aims to give, not so much the 
exact words as the spirit of those immortal consola- 
tions, and that it has done with great effect, as myriads 
of sorrowing ones will attest. Jesus bade his dis- 
ciples trust in God and trust also in him. He assured 
them that there were many rooms in the house of his 
Father, that thei^e would come to them, in his place, 
another comforter, who would never leave them as he 
was about to do, but would dwell with them always, 
and teach them everything and enable them to under- 
stand all that he bad said ; the Spirit of Truth in their 
own min(Js. 



CLOSING SCENES 195 

After awhile, they rose from supper, and he led 
them to a garden outside the city, which, it is stated, 
was a favorite resort of his. He must have been there 
many times, it would seem then. But this is the only 
visit to the place that is mentioned, which only shows 
how brief and imperfect these four Accounts of Jesus 
are. 

At the garden gate, he dismissed all but his three 
most intimate disciples. With these he went in, and 
to some retired part of the place, which, I suppose, he 
particularly loved. 

And then there occurred a scene, the knowledge of 
which I do not believe would ever have come down 
to us if the narratives of it in the first three Gospels 
had not been written very early, long before those 
ideas of the metaphysical nature of Jesus had begun 
to germinate, with which this scene is so entirely at 
variance that it can only be reconciled with them by 
an explanation as absurd as it is revolting. 

Of the reality of this scene I cannot doubt. The 
manner in which it is related stamps it as true. Not 
only is no explanation of it given or even hinted at, 
there is no conceivable reason why such an apparent 
exposure of weakness in Jesus should have been made 
but that it was a fact. The narrators have nothing 
to say about it except to state briefly what took place. 
They as certainly give no sign of having had any pre- 



196 JESUS 

conceived ideas to the support or elucidation of which 
such things as are here related might be supposed to 
be necessary. 

With the dogma of the divine nature of Jesus, this 
passage of the history is, I repeat, utterly inconsistent. 
But it overflows with the truth of nature when we 
take it as an account of a man like ourselves. 

In order to bring this scene in the garden into 
accord with his being the very God, recourse has been 
had to the incredible idea that his agony was caused, 
not by any infirmity of nature, but by his having the 
sins of the whole world laid upon him. There is a 
distinct figure of speech here, which may satisfy those 
who need only words. But beyond this, there is no. 
meaning that does not outrage every idea of right. 
These old and barbarous notions, however, are so 
rapidly dying out of mind that it is needless to dwell 
on them. Rather let us try to read this passage in 
the life of Jesus by the light of truth and human 
nature. 

Consider first how the whole tenor of his teachings 
indicates the depth and tenderness of his sensibilities. 
A Religion of so eminently an affectionate character 
as Christianity never could have sprung from the man 
of iron which Jesus must have been not to have been 
moved in so terrible a situation. 

Think too what a laborious life he had been leading. 



CLOSING SCENES 19t 

with what exhausting emotions he had been harassed 
that very evening, — how he bad postponed his own 
burden of suffering to comfort those poor afflicted men 
around him. 

Bear in mind the lonely place, the silent midnight 
hour, and the fact that he was momently expecting to 
be seized and dragged away to a death of torture and 
shame, forsaken by every friend, and feeling that not 
a soul on earth appreciated his purpose or his position. 
Has there ever breathed a man in so profound a soli- 
tude ? How the suspense of those last hours was 
tasking his strength, we may infer from what he said to 
his betrayer at the supper : " Wliat you do, do quickly. ^'^ 

When all the circumstances are duly pondered, is it 
any wonder, that in that dark, silent, solitary place, 
his emotion for awhile overwhelmed him ? Would it 
have been consonant with the tenderness of his 
character, with his appalling situation, or with human 
nature, if in that lonely garden, at that lonely hour of 
night, he had experienced no revulsion of feeling, if he 
had not been overpowered for awhile by the horrors 
of his position ? 

Wonderfully true to human nature are the particu- 
lars of the story that is told of that hour. He wanted 
to be alone, and yet could not bear to be alone. Dis- 
missing all but three of his disciples, upon reaching 
some retired part of the garden, lie bade these three 

18 



198 JESUS 

stay Avhere they were, while he went apart by hiaiself, 
begging them to keep awake and on the watch, as he 
was every moment expecting to be arrested, and would 
not be taken wholly unawares. He told his three 
friends that his distress was so great it seemed to 
him as if he should die. ('' My soul is exceeding 
sorrowful J even unto death.'' ^) 

He went from them but a short distance. They 
saw him throw^ himself prostrate on the earth. They 
heard him ejaculate a few brief words expressive of 
the mental conflict by which his soul was wrung. 
And then those poor, bewildered men, worn out by the 
excitement which they bad undergone, yielded at that 
late hour to the exhaustion of nature, and fell asleep. 

When he came back and found them sleeping, an 
exclamation of reproach escaped from him : ^^ Gould 
you not watch with me one hour P' But instantly, 
with characteristic magnanimity, he suggested, as an 
excuse for their unseasonable slumbers, what he was 
doubtless conscious of in his own case,, that the spirit 
was willing but the flesh weak. And full of meaning 
too, as wrung from his own agonizing experience at 
that moment, were his monitory words, ^^ Watch and 
pray, lest ye enter into temptation,''^ 

Three times did he leave his three friends and re- 
turn to them, turning, like one distracted, from earth 
to heaven and from God to man. 



CLOSING SCENES * 199 

So deadly sick was he at heart that, as he bent 
over his disciples to waken them, the sweat, pouring 
from him, fell upon them in drops so thick and heavy 
that one of them, — Peter, it is most likely, — only half 
awake, and perturbed by vague imaginings of coming 
violence and suffering, fancied that it was drops of 
blood that he felt. He could not possibly in the 
darkness have distinguished any color. Hence grew 
the report of the bloody sweat. 

Out of this temporary weakness, came a new and 
victorious strength. So calm and entirely himself did 
he become that his disciples could not otherwise think 
than that angels had been with him. Not in vain 
was he plunged into that black deep. He rose from it 
fully prepared for the fearful hour. When he caught 
sight through the trees of the lights borne by those 
who came to seize him, and heard the sound of their 
approaching steps, and the suspense was over, all 
conflict with mortal weakness was at an end also. He 
was himself again. By a natural law, his mind recov- 
ered its habitual tone. 

So far from dreaming of escape or retreat, he went 
to meet the men who were sent to lead him to his 
death. 

They were armed with swords and clubs. Coming 
to this lonely place under the black shadow of night 
upon an unusual errand, to get possession of the 



200 ' JESUS 

person of a man rumored to possess preternatural 
powers, they doubtless kept close together. There 
was everything in the circumstances to awaken their 
superstitious fears and render them liable to be panic- 
struck by any unlooked-for occurrence. 

When, therefore, suddenly emerging from the deep 
shades of the garden, the man whom they sought 
stood right before them in the full light of their 
torches, and demanded whom they wanted, and upon 
their answering, *' Jesus of Nazareth," declared himself 
to be that person, they were startled as by an appari- 
tion, — so awe-struck by his fearless and commanding 
presence that they were thrown into confusion and 
the foremost, starting back, overthrew those who 
were close behind them. 

Is it not in impressive keeping with the inborn 
dignity of the character of Jesus, — the sense that he 
showed of the contumely with which he was treated in 
being thus seized in secret, and by a band armed with 
swords and clubs ? "' Do yon come after me,'^ said he, 
*^ as if I were some miserable thief? You might have 
taken me at any time in the Temple where I have 
taught daily. But you did not dare to lay hands 
upon me then. The night — darkness, is your fit 
season." 

He was led first to the house of the High Priest, 



CLOSING SCENES 201 

where were ali*eady gathered members of the Jewish 
ecclesiastical Council, waiting for Jesus to be brought 
before them. 

And here one is struck with the difference between 
him then and there and the most distinguished of the 
Apostles, Paul, upon a like occasion. When, upon 
the High Priest's questioning him about his teaching, 
Jesus replied, that whatever he had said had been said 
not in secret, but publicly, in the Temple, where the 
people gathered, and that it was not he, but those 
that had heard him, who were to be asked what he 
had taught, some one of the retainers of the High 
Priest, standing by, slapped Jesus in the face, exclaim- 
ing, ^^Is that the way you answer the High Priest?" 
'^If I have said what is false,'' was the calm and dig- 
nified reply, ^^show it to be so, but if I have spoken 
only the truth, why do you strike me?'' When Paul 
afterwards was brought before the same High Priest, 
and that dignitary bade one of the by-standers strike 
him on the mouth, Paul broke forth with fiery indig- 
nation : '' God will strike you, you whited wall ! Do 
you sit there to judge me according to the law, and do 
you command me to be struck contrary to the law?" 

The narrative of the arraignment of Jesus before 
the Procurator, Pontius Pilate, and of his crucifixion 

18* 



202 JESUS 

following immediately thereupon, is marked all over 
with the features of a true history. 

There is not the shadow of a reason for supposing 
that it was the intention of the narrators to depict the 
character of the Procurator. And yet, not Tacitus 
himself, Hhe profound historian,^ had it come in his 
way to describe that magistrate, could have given us 
a more lifelike portrait of the man than is undesign- 
edly presented by the incidents related in the Four 
Gospels. 

And what is still more interesting, the great charac- 
ter of Jesus also, the extraordinary manner of man 
that he was, is portrayed in the same unconscious way, 
with like consistency and wonderful vividness. 

Remarkable as this is, it is no more than we have a 
right to demand in a true history. The facts stated 
being true, the illustration of the characters of the 
persons concerned comes of itself. 

When individuals are placed in such fearfully un- 
precedented positions as both Jesus and Pilate were, — 
the one, summoned, in the Providence of Heaven, to 
sit in judgment upon the most extraordinary person 
that has appeared among men and to hold that great 
life in his hands ; the other, to confront instant death, 
alone, with no friend on earth, with every circum- 
stance attending that could add to the horror of the 
situation, it must needs be that the inmost quality and 



CLOSING SCENES 203 

stuff of the two should be laid bare in every gesture 
and syllablSif No falseness, no weakness, could stand 
such severe and searching tests without being at once 
glaringly exposed, as the case of Pilate most plainly 
shows. 

A man of the world, asking, What is Truth ? and 
indifferent to the answer,* — a sceptic, I imagine, as 
to the gods, and yet seized with a vague, superstitious 
apprehension that here might be some deity in disguise, 
when, utterly at a loss to comprehend the silent com- 
posure of the prisoner in such terrible circumstances, 
he was told that the man had called himself the Son 
of God, and word also came to him in the judgment- 
hall from his wife bidding him beware how he con- 
demned the person standing before him, as she had 
had a remarkable dream about him,f — in his embar- 



* The reason, probably, why Pilate went out without wait- 
ing for an answer (John, xviii. 38), was, because, restless and 
uneasy in the dilemma in which he found himself, he was in 
no mood for the consideration of so general and abstract 
a question. Whatever was the state of his mind, he evi- 
dently put the question to Jesus superficially, as a man of the 
world might, without really any strong interest in it at any 
time, least of all, then. 

f Nothing is more likely than that rumors of the wonderful 
incidents that marked the career of Jesus and of his great 
sayings should have penetrated the palace of the Procurator 
and reached the ears of his wife, upon whose mind such an 
impression was made that it suggested and shaped her dreams. 



204 JUSUS 

rassment catching at the weakest and most discredita- 
ble subterfuges to evade the responsibility of senten- 
cing this inscrutable person to death, — willing all the 
time that Herod or the Jews should do the deed, if he 
might only escape doing it himself, — made blind by 
his selfish fears to common justice, pronouncing Jesus 
innocent and ordering him to be scourged in the same 
breath, in the vain hope that something less than the 
fatal Cross, the scourge, would appease the Priests, 
when, as a concession on his part, it would be sure to 
whet their appetite for blood, — poorly hiding under 
a ridicule of the alleged royal pretensions of Jesus, 
which we may well suspect to have been affected, his 
terror at the representations that would be made to 
his imperial master at Rome, the most suspicious of 
despots, should he let a man go free, charged with 
making himself a king,* — in attempting to force Jesus 

^ It was not until after the Priests liad told Pilate that he 
was no friend to Caesar if he let Jesus go, that Pilate sought 
to cast ridicule upon the idea of Jesus being a king. The 
instant his loyalty was questioned, the Procurator took his 
seat as if to proceed to judgment. To cover the alarm with 
which this accusation inspired him, which had hurried him 
to the judgment-seat, and which, in so doing, he was probably 
conscious of having betrayed, he said, sneeringly, to the Priests, 
*' Look at your king !" To this they shouted in reply, ^'Away 
with him ! Crucify him !" Pilate, persisting in his banter, 
asked, ''Shall I crucify your king?" When to this question, 
the answering cry was, "We have no king but Csesar," all 



CLOSING SCENES 205 

to tell whence he came, betraying his weakness by 
vaunting his power, — overcoming at last his vague 
awe of Jesus by his more definite dread of Caesar, — 
yielding Jesus up to be crucified, flattering himself 
that he could cleanse his conscience of innocent 
blood as easily as he could dash water from his 
hands, — and, finally, for the humiliating straits to 
which he could not avoid being conscious of having 
been driven by the hated Jews, meanly revenging 
himself upon them, after the very manner of a small, 
weak nature, by causing to be affixed to the Cross, 
over the head of Jesus, an inscription, of which he 
refused to allow any alteration, written in Greek and 
Latin as well as in Hebrew, so th at it might be read 
by all, foreigners as well as natives, and the ridicule 
be cast upon the proud Jewish people of having a 
miserable man, covered with the ignominy of cruci- 
fixion, for their king, — such was the Roman Pro- 
curator, Pontius Pilate, as we learn from the Gospel 
narratives. Every act and every word ascribed to 
him are in perfect consistency with the idea of a weak 
man suddenly called to meet an occasion to which 
he was altogether unequal, a man, not naturally crueP 
but rendered so, in the circumstances, by cowardice 
and utter w^ant of moral strength and principle. 

power to keep up a strain of levity died away in sickening 
fear whitening the cheek of the Procurator, as the dread name 
of Csesar again smote his ear. 



206 JUSUS 

In like manner, I repeat, is the character of Jesus 
represented. 

If there is any one thing, the perception of which 
helps more than anything else to harmonize the 
various details of the Gospel narratives, and breathe 
into them a living soul of historical truth, it is the 
peculiar personal force of Jesus, the native power of 
the man. A great fact, undesignedly implied through- 
out. But it has never been brought fully forward and 
allowed its due weight, — far from it. And yet it ex- 
plains and accredits so much ! 

This one fact, making all else plain, illumining 
and vivifying the whole history, has been completely 
hidden by the errors so long and widely prevalent 
concerning the nature of Jesus, errors, that leave even 
in the minds of thos^ who have renounced them the 
greatest reluctance to study him fully and fairly as a 
man. Shrinking from the possibility of finding human 
weaknesses in him, we have missed seeing the extraor- 
dinary personal power which becomes visible only in 
connection and contrast with the weak nature over 
which it triumphed so signally. 

And when this key to the whole history is wanting, 
the Gospels become open to all manner of disparaging 
criticism, and are as explicable upon the theory of 
Strauss as upon any other, and we can look for nothing 
better than the thin, fanciful Vie de Jesus of M. Renan. 



CLOSING SCENES 207 

Only once is this pregnant fact directly referred to 
in the Gospels, and that is where the first appearance 
of Jesus in public as a teacher is related. Then it is 
said that his hearers were struck not by what he said, 
but by the air of authority with which he spoke, — in 
other words, by his manner ; and the manner of a man 
is the natural expression of the man himself. The 
style is the man. That this characteristic of Jesus, 
due, as I have said, to the commanding strength of 
the convictions to which he gave utterance and in 
which he lived and moved and had his being, is not 
elsewhere alluded to in the Gospels, is because it is a 
power inseparable from the person himself,, as uncon- 
sciously felt as it is unconsciously exercised, like the 
air that we breathe without thinking of it, just one of 
those things that unpractised writers like the authors 
of the Gospels, not at all of an analyz^ing habit of 
mind, were the last to think of attempting to define, 
or even of noting. 

That the extraordinary personal power of Jesus 
made itself felt deeply, however, there is abundant 
evidence of the most impressive character. It is 
traceable throughout the Gospels. The Gospels 
themselves are the effects of it 

But nowhere does it appear so strikingly as in 
the accounts of the Trial of Jesus. For th^re it is 
manifested not so much in any act, or in any word 



208 JESUS 

then spoken by him, although every word of his then 
and there breathes the native greatness of his mind, 
as in the unbroken silence that he observed in that 
fearful situation, as to saying anything in his own 
defence. From the beginning to the end, not a sylla- 
ble did he breathe in protestation of his innocence. 
Not for an instant did he descend to self-exculpation. 

What word, what act has ever spoken as that 
Silence spoke and still speaks ! It tells not merely of 
unmurmuring resignation to the inevitable, but of a 
conscious rectitude, of a self-respect, of a noble pride 
of virtue, of an indomitable magnanimity, to which I 
know not where to look for a parallel. He would not 
hear the Priests. No self-concern, no dread of the' 
gathering horror, could move him to pay any heed to 
their accusations. And why ? Because he saw 
things just as they were, — saw that the Priests were 
sworn to take his life, — saw that their charges against 
him were the merest pretexts, as idle as they were 
false, and that, let them be refuted ever so triumph- 
antly, it would not make the slightest difference. To 
reply to them, therefore, would be a waste of breath, 
which, of all times, that supreme hour was no time for. 
He was better occupied with his own thoughts. His 
blood, — that was his only answer. He might as well 
have trifled away those last moments in talking to the 
senseless stones. Seeing this with a clearness of 



CLOSING SCENES 200 

vision which no fear could dim, above every provoca- 
tion to open his lips, calmly, without effort, he held 
his peace, and, strong in the full possession of his own 
perfect mind, stood there mute before his ferocious 
accusers ready to endure any injuries that their false- 
hoods might inflict on him. 

And after Pilate, having declared him innocent, had 
caused him to be scourged, showing thereby that he, 
Pilate, was as little to be moved as the Priests by 
justice and humanity, Jesus refused to speak to him 
also. When to compel him to speak and tell whence 
he came, Pilate threatened him with his power, then 
he spoke, but not to answer the question that was put 
to him, but to tell the Procurator that he had only so 
much power over him as had been given him ''from 
above,''* in other words, that it was not in him, — it 

^ '' Fi^om above^^ (John, xix. 11). Was it because Pilate 
was a Koman, a Gentile, not recognizing the Power above by 
any title by which Jesus would designate it, and likely, if 
Jesus had referred to his heavenly Father, to understand him 
to mean Jupiter, or some other of the heathen gods, that 
Jesus used this comprehensive form of speech, '' from above," 
alike intelligible to Jew and Gentile ? 

The answer of Jesus to Pilate is obscure. I have stated 
what I understand to be the purport of it. When Pilate 
boasts of his power, Jesus virtually tells him that he has no 
power in the case whatever, that he could not have any, un- 
less it had been given him to be a different man from what 
he was. As Pilate, therefore, had not the moral power to 
protect Jesus, the greater the sin of him who had put Jesus 

19 



210 JESUS 

was not gi^en him, — to act independently, that he 
was only an instrument of those who had delivered 
him, Jesus, into his hands. All the greater was their 
guilt. 

Is it any wonder that Pilate was overawed by 
Jesus ? How was it possible that it could be other- 
wise ? Was it for a weak, superficial, worldly, selfish 
man, like Pilate, to penetrate thr ough the forlorn sur- 
roundings of the prisoner before him and discern the 
transcendent greatness of mind which that silent, self- 
possessed behavior betokened? Could Pilate have 
caught sight of that, all would have been plain and 
simple enough in his eyes, seen in that great light; 
and weak as he was, I think he would have been ready 
to defy the Priests and brave the reigning Caesar him- 
self, and to suffer any death rather than that a hair of 
the head of Jesus should be harmed by his allowance. 
But it was not given to the ill-fated Procurator to see 
this. He could only perceive that the manner in 
which Jesus bore himself was most strange. He had 
never met with the like before. He could not solve 
the secret of that silence. And accordingly the pris- 
oner was to his judge only an impenetrable and dis- 
turbing mystery. 



into Pilate's hands. By that act, by whomsoever done, Jesus 
was condemned and crucified. 



CLOSING SCENES 211 

According to the custom, Jesus was compelled to 
cany the Cross on which he was to be hung to the 
place of execution. But what with all that he had 
gone through, the torture inflicted by the scourge, 
which ancient writers pronounce horrible, and the 
rough treatment suffered at the barbarous hands of 
the soldiers to whom he had been given up to be put 
to death, he was too weak to bear that burden. When 
this became apparent to his executioners they re- 
lieved him of it, and compelled a man whom they 
met to carry the Cross, a stranger, coming from the 
country, without any present who knew him and who 
might interfere and create disturbance and delay. 
This relief they granted Jesus, not, I imagine, from 
any prompting of compassion, but from the apprehen- 
sion that, when they reached the place of execution, 
he might be so far gone that they would lose the bar- 
barous sport, which they promised themselves, in wit- 
nessing his agonies under crucifixion. 

Through the streets of Jerusalem, which a few 
days before had resounded with the shouts of the 
people welcoming him to the capital and to his throne, 
moved the grim procession, followed by a crowd, and 
among them were women who wept at the sight of 
his sufferings and at the thought of the horrible scene 
to which he was going. ^^ Daughters of Jerusalem, ^^ 
he said, '' weep not for me, weep for yourselves and 



212 JESUS 

your children, for the days are coming- when it will be 
said, Happy those who never bare, and the breasts 
that never gave nourishment !'' The horrors that 
encompassed him could not hide from him the woes 
which, to his prophetic vision, were about to be poured 
out on the doomed city. 

Upon arriving at the place of execution, a drink 
was offered him, which was customarily prepared for 
those who were condemned to be crucified, and was 
intended, with some touch of humanity, to deaden 
their sensibility to the torture to which they were to 
be put. But Jesus refused all such alleviations. 

He was stripped of his principal garments, which 
were seized by his executioners as their perquisites. 

The torture of being nailed and bound to the Cross 
could not wring from him any shrieking appeal for 
pity, but there burst from his lips, in his mortal agony, 
the prayer that bears immortal witness to the invinci- 
ble magnanimity of his nature, ^'Father! Forgive 
them ! They do not know what they are doing !^^ a 
prayer which has been commonly understood as refer- 
ring to his enemies in general, but which, it is more 
natural to suppose, as the connection suggests, had 
immediate reference to his executioners, the Roman 
soldiers, as ignorant as they were barbarous. While 
they were tearing his flesh and their coarse hands 
were dripping with his blood, he was pleading for 
them with the Infinite Mercy. 



CLOSING SCENES 213 

He is related to have spoken at intervals several 
times in that excruciating position on the Cross. And 
I cannot doubt the truth of the record. Every sylla- 
ble murmured by so extraordinary a person in so 
frightful a situation must have burned itself like 
fire into the memory of many there present. And 
besides, the ejaculations, reported to have burst from 
those parched lips, are all in pathetic harmony with 
the tender and great nature of the Sufferer. 

It is stated that he caught sight of his mother, 
standing a little way off with his beloved disciple, 
John, and, notwithstanding the torture that he was 
suffering, his heart yearned towards her, and, in one 
or two brief words, — his fearful posture admitting not 
of more, — he called to her, ''Woman! Look! Thy 
son !" and to John, *' Look ! Thy mother !" And they 
interpreted these words to mean, as he, doubtless, in- 
tended, that John was to be a son to her, and she a 
mother to John. 

At another moment, so severe was the suffering, he 
is recorded to have cried, ''My God! my God! why 
hast thou forsaken me ?" 

So despairing a cry never would have been put 
into his mouth without a word of explanation had he 
not actually uttered it. 

But while it is the wail of human weakness, it, 
none the less but all the more, impresses us with the 

19* 



214 jmus 

entire naturalness of the character- of Jesus, and 
satisfies us that his strength, more wonderful than his 
weakness, was due to no stoical insensibility real or 
affected. It enables us to appreciate his fortitude by 
revealing to us the sharpness of his agony, for terrible 
must it have been to wring such a cry from faith like 
his. 

This paroxysm of despair found expression in the 
language of the 22d Psalm, of which it is the be- 
ginning, a Psalm, a portion of which is so very ap- 
propriate to the situation of Jesus at that hour, that 
it is only natural to suppose, although in his agony 
he was only able to gasp out the commencing words 
of it, yet that the whole Psalm was present to his 
memory: **I am,'' so it runs, ^Hhe reproach of men 
and the scorn of the people. All who see me scoff at 
me. They open wide the lips. They shake the head. 
He trusted in the Lord, Let Him help him. Let Him 
deliver him, since he delighted in Him. Thou art He 
that didst bring me into the world. Thou didst make 
me to lie secure upon my mother's breast. Upon Thee 
have I cast myself from my birth. Thou hast been my 
God from my earliest breath ! Oh, be not far from me, 
for trouble is near. For there is none to help."* 

Teachers of the Law aud chief Priests, the clergy 

^ JN'oyes's Translation. 



CLOSING SCENES 215 

of the clay, stood at a little distance, looking on with 
stony hearts, enjoying their triumph. It was not in 
them to make allowance for the extreme torture which 
he was suffering, but when they heard this cry, seizing 
upon it as a confession that God had indeed forsaken 
him and that his trust in God failed him at last, one 
of their number, whose frontlet and phylacteries were, 
doubtless, not the least conspicuous, and who had all 
Scripture at his tongue's end, seized upon a passage 
from the very Psalm, the first words of which had burst 
in piteous tones from the lips of the Crucified, and, re- 
sponding to his cry in bitter, exultant mockery, and 
in accents half sneering and half the sanctimonious 
intonation of the synagogue, shouted, ^^ He trusted in 
the Lord I Let Him deliver him l^ 



■^ It is true, the Scribes and chief Priests are stated to have 
taunted Jesus with these words, before he uttered the cry, 
'* My God! My GodT^ etc. But, as we have seen throughout, 
the narrators are very careless about relating things in their 
due order. It is not likely that the mocking cries, with which 
the Priests assailed Jesus, were uttered all at once, precisely 
as they are given in the narrative (Matth. xxvii. 42, 43]. 
They were heard at intervals, but the narrator, in telling the 
story, puts them all together. 

The words, " He t7msted in the Lord. Let Hhn deliver hini^^ 
mentioned among the derisive cries that rose around the 
Cross, appeared to me to lack pertinency, until their connec- 
tion with the cry of Jesus, by which they were suggested, 
disclosed itself. 

It is by tracing these undesigned moral relations existing 



216 JESUS 

Among the last words of Jesus was the exclama- 
tion, '^It is ended !'^ The common disposition to find 
a significance deeper than that which meets the ear 
in the last utterances of the dying has led to the un- 
derstanding of this ejaculation as having reference to 
the completion of the whole great work of Jesus. 
But it is much simpler and more natural to interpret 
it as equivalent to, * It is past!' or *It is over!' and 
as referring to the acute agony which Jesus was 
enduring, and which ceased as the merciful lethargy 
of death stole over him. 

It was, as ancient writers report, not i^ncommon for 
the sufferings of the crucified to be protracted for two 
or three days before death came to their relief. Jesus, 
however, expired a few hours after he was fastened to 
the Cross. Pilate, it is stated, when informed that he 
was dead, was surprised that he had died so soon. 

There was a wide difference, I imagine, between the 
physical organization of Jesus, and that of the men 
who ordinarily suffered death by crucifixion, men of 
hard, animal natures. The exhausting scenes which 
he had previously gone through, and a circumstance, 
presently to be noticed, fully account, I conceive, for 
his expiring so soon after he was nailed to the Cross. 

between the facts recorded that the truth of the history is 
made to appear, and we are enabled to harmonize the inci- 
dents narrated. 



CLOSING SCENES 217 

As the next day was a day of special religious ob- 
servance among the Jews, the ecclesiastical authori- 
ties, with a scrupulous regard for the outward decencies 
of religion entirely consistent with the utter absence of 
any regard for truth and humanity, unwilling that 
that holy Sabbath should be defiled by the ghastly 
spectacle, requested Pilate to order the legs of the cru- 
cified to be broken and the bodies removed. It would 
seem that when the lower limbs were broken, death 
speedily ensued. This order was executed upon the 
two criminals who were crucified with Jesus. But 
Jesus was found to be, to all appearances, already dead. 
It was, therefore, unnecessary that his legs should be 
broke*!!. To make certain, however, the fact that he 
had breathed his last, a spear was plunged into his 
lifeless body. And ^^immediately there came out blood 
and wateVj^^ that is, watery blood or bloody water, 
water more or less discolored by blood. 

The mention of this circumstance, that the legs of 
Jesus were not broken but that his body was pierced 
with a spear, is found only in the Fourth Gospel, and 
there, — and nothing of the same kind occurs anywhere 
else in these Writings, — it is accompanied by an earn- 
est asseveration of the truth of the witness of the 
fact : '^And he ivho saw bears testimony^ and his testi- 
mony is trite, and he knows that he speaks the triith.^^ 

The only reason that appears why the narrator 



218 JESUS 

should thus pause in this particular place to assert the 
truth of the witness is that the facts that the legs of 
Jesus were not broken and that his body was pierced 
struck him as a wonderful fulfilment of the passages of 
Ancient Scripture, which he immediately cites: ^^ For 
these things were done,'''' he says, '^ that the Scripture 
might he fulfilled, ^ A hone of him shall not he hroken,^ 
and again another Scripture which says, * They loill 
look on him whom they have pierced.^ ^'* 

As to the appearance of the water discolored by 
blood (it may have been only very slightly so), it is a 
well-attested fact that, although pure blood never flows 
from a dead body, yet when intense agony has been 
endured, there is, sometimes, a sudden and extraordi- 
nary accumulation of water, either in the pericardium 
or in the part affected. f Such, in all probability, was 
the fact in the case of Jesus. And may it not be that 
the water, suddenly collected in an unusual quantity 
around the heart, impeded its action, and was thus the 
immediate cause why he expired so soon after he was 
hung upon the Cross ? At all events we can discover 
no reason for the mention of the flowing of water from 

^ Exod. xii. 46 ; Numb. ix. 12 ; Zech. xii. 10. The reader 
has only to turn to these passages to see how purely fanciful 
was the use which these Jewish writers make of their Sacred 
Writings. 

f For striking cases in point, see American Med. Journal, 
Hew Series, vol. xiii. pp. 85, 365. 



CLOSING SCENES 219 

the opening made by the spear but its truth. It does 
not appear to have been a circumstance that fulfilled 
any prediction of the Old Testament. 

Two of the Gospels state that, at the death of 
Jesus, the veil in the Temple that hung before the 
Holy of Holies was found rent in two from the top to 
the bottom. The first Gospel adds that the earth 
shook, and that rocks were cleft, and tombs opened, 
and many bodies of saints that slept, arose, and came 
out of the graves after the resurrection of Jesus and 
went into the city and appeared to ^*many" (Matth. 
xxvii. 51-53). It is also related that from the sixth 
hour to the ninth, i.e. from twelve, noon, to three p.m., 
there was darkness over all the land. 

There is no mention of these occurrences in the 
Fourth Gospel. All the other three Gospels mention 
the darkness. The third Gospel notices no other of 
the startling concomitants of the Crucifixion which 
are found in the first Gospel. 

This passage of the history occasions no little dif- 
ficulty. But it requires but a moment's thought to 
perceive that rumors, such as these, are just what we 
should look for. It is hardly saying too much to 
affirm that they are necessary to the credibility of the 
history. 

It is well known how, upon occasions of great 



220 JESUS 

public excitement, when the minds of men are carried 
away beyond the bounds of reason, and even of 
their bodily senses, by some strong passion, wonder, 
or fear, or hope, and the imagination bears sway, 
what strange and extravagant rumors arise and gain 
instant credence. Then the most ordinary incidents 
give birth to the most exaggerated reports. 

These stories, therefore, of the strange things that 
accompanied the Crucifixion of so extraordinary a per- 
son as Jesus, under such circumstances of horror, are 
in full accord with human experience and history, and 
they would always have been seen to be so if the 
personal greatness of Jesus, of which they are the 
effects, had been rightly appreciated. 

The popular mind, which Jesus had impressed with 
such power, was so stirred at this awful death that 
the nervous and sensitive especially, and these com- 
municated their excitement to others, saw everything 
through the magnifying medium of their raised imagina- 
tions. Occurrences, which, at other times, would have 
passed without notice, became mysterious portents, big 
with an ominous significance. The aspect, which the 
overcast heavens took from the horror-struck minds of 
men, seemed to be a preternatural gloom. A rent in 
the veil in the Temple, caused* it may have been, long 
before by age or accident, was now observed for the 
first time. A single tomb, unaccountably found open. 



CLOSING SCENES 221 

and exposing to the passers-by the bodies of the dead, 
would have sufficed at such a juncture to give rise to 
the most exaggerated reports of earthquakes and cleft 
rocks and open graves and apparitions seen by many. 
Especially were stories of this kind likely to be told 
and credited among an ignorant and superstitious 
people, and in an age when there existed none of the 
means, that are now possessed, of correcting popular 
delusions. 

The account, therefore, of marvellous portents 
accompanying the Crucifixion of Jesus, so far from 
casting the shadow of a doubt over the actual history, 
tends only to confirm it, showing incidentally — and, 
therefore, all the more powerfully — that what is related 
of Jesus, previous to his death, must have taken place, 
and that the Life of Jesus must have been of no 
ordinary character, since it told so upon the minds of 
men that, when he was put to death in so violent a 
manner, there was no report of marvels attending that 
horror which the people were not fully prepared to 
believe. 

For the extraordinary event that is related to have 
occurred on the third morning after the Crucifixion of 
Jesus, and for what may be said in behalf of its 
historical truth, I beg leave again to refer to the little 

20 



222 JESUS 

book entitled, '' The Unconscious Truth of the Four 
Gospels. ^^ 

In conclusion, I suppose no one ever studies this 
remarkable History without regretting that it is not 
more full and exact. How much must there have 
happened that is left untold ! And yet I do not know 
that any greater fulness and exactness would be 
desirable, if these qualities could have been secured 
only at the cost of the careless simplicity that per- 
vades these Writings, and the effect of which is to 
create in us the conviction that their authors not only 
knew what they relate to be true, but that they felt 
that they were telling things known to multitudes at 
the time they wrote. It was not only because they 
were strong in their own knowledge, but it was 
because they were strong in the knowledge of thou- 
sands of others, that they were so careless about ex- 
plaining things, and had so little concern for observ- 
ing the due order of events and putting the facts 
related in their right places. This characteristic of 
the Gospels, the utter absence of all anxiety about 
effect, of all solicitude to prove and convince, implies a 
great deal more than the faith of their authors. It 
implies that at the time these books were written, or 
rather the narratives of which these books are com- 



CLOSING SCENES 223 

pilations, there was a great number of persons to 
whom the events narrated were perfectly well known 
to have occurred. 

Wonderful is the character of Jesus. And hardly 
less wonderful is the manner in which it is portrayed 
in the Gospels, undesignedly, by brief, sketchy narra- 
tives of a variety of incidents, strung together with 
only the slightest regard to their right order and con- 
nection, and yet yielding a result of unequalled moral 
beauty and of a world-saving power, — a result, self- 
consistent, all-consistent, and spontaneous, because, 
let me reiterate, the incidents narrated are true. 



THE E:N^r>. 



